 Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, injuring hundreds of worshipers. Now, of those injured, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, at least seven are in a critical condition. Many more are in hospital. Now, the raid sparked widespread outcry because of the significance of the mosque, which is considered the third holiest site in Islam. Footage of the raid has been widely shared on social media with police using stun grenades and rubber-covered metal bullets to clear worshipers from the site. This is the third night that Israeli police and soldiers have attacked people praying there. So why is this happening now? Well, the raids were thought to be an attempt by Israeli authorities to clear the holy site before a march by right-wing Zionists that was due to take place. That was the annual Jerusalem Day march. It marks the date that Israel began its illegal capture and occupation of East Jerusalem following the 1967 war. As far as I understand, in the end, that didn't go forward. The raid also takes place off the back of days of protests against the eviction of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Their Palestinians are being expelled from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers. It's a practice which has been ongoing in the city for decades. When it comes to that particular dispute or that eviction, there was another video which has gone really, really viral recently, which is an interaction which really shows the power dynamics at play in those evictions. Jacob, you know this is not your house. Yes, but if I go, you don't go back. So what's the problem? What are you yelling at me? I didn't do this. I didn't do this. But it's easy to yell at me, but I didn't do this. You are stealing my house. And if I don't steal it, someone else is going to steal it. No, no one is allowed to steal it. Really appalling, which is why, you know, that travelled far because of just how outrageous that was. And there is one more outrage currently ongoing in Jerusalem, which frames the storming of Al-Aqsa. This is Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is the ongoing violent attempts by Israeli police to stop Palestinians gathering at the city's Damascus gates during Ramadan. This Sky Report gives an idea of the context there. These steps are steps which Palestinians who live in this part of East Jerusalem gather in for Ramadan when their fast comes to an end each evening. They gather on these steps. And what we have seen tonight has been the same for the past few nights. For no logical reason, the Israeli police are moving in and in a very blunt way, controlling, as they say, the crowd, a crowd which doesn't, as far as we've seen, need any control. These are families. Yep, lots of young people as well, young boys here too, who are at the end of their Ramadan fast are gathering here. And we've seen over the course of the evening, water cannon filled with a rancid skunk, as it's known, is sprayed at people, sprayed a little bit earlier on at young boys who were gathered up at the wall here. Again, rancid water being sprayed at people who were just gathering after praying. It's horrible to watch. To discuss the raid on the Al-Aqsa mosque and the repression at the Damascus gates, I spoke earlier to Akram Salhab, a Palestinian from Jerusalem who is currently based there. And this is part of the Israelis' broader policy of attempting to change the character of Jerusalem and indeed to change the character of the country as a whole. Israeli settler colonial policies, since Israel's inception have been designed to get the maximum amount of land with a minimum number of Palestinians on that land, as with all settler colonial projects, that takes place in a variety of ways. And what we've seen in Jerusalem is an attempt to change over time the demographic makeup of the city. And the important background to this is that we'll talk about different kinds of policies, land confiscation, house demolitions, the discriminatory planning, the revocation of Palestinian residency rights in Jerusalem. But what happens around Ramadan and Easter, which has just been orthodox Easter here in Jerusalem, is that the Israeli state, despite all of what it's been doing over the past years in Jerusalem, cannot change the fact that when it comes to Ramadan or when it comes to Easter, it's very clearly a Palestinian Arab city. All of the streets are filled with Palestinians, all the shops are open, Arab music is playing, and Palestinians are out in huge numbers throughout the city. And it's very clear that we have a presence in this city. And despite everything they've attempted to do, we're still here and we're still standing up for our rights, and we still have our claims to sovereignty. And this is what Israel cannot stand. And so everything that's brought us up to this point has been an attempt to them by the Israeli authorities to destroy any Palestinian public presence in the city. Firstly, by putting barriers at Damascus Gate. So Palestinians would often, after Iftar would go and sit at Damascus Gate and have Shisha pipes, or hang out, or dance, or just spend time there, or wander up Salah Dean Street, which is where many Palestinian businesses and shops are located. The Israelis put barriers at Damascus Gate, which prevented people from sitting there. And that was the first, that's what began the, and in Palestinians rejecting that, what began the first confrontations that happened during Ramadan. The Israeli authorities also attacked Palestinian Christians going into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. They wouldn't allow them in, and they were beating families, children, and others trying to get into pray on Orthodox Easter. And on Orthodox Easter, Palestinian Christians are different branches of Christianity, which are represented in it. Walk up and down with scout groups in the Old City, filling it with music and sound, an obvious presence of Palestinians being there. And this again is not something the Israelis are willing to sit by and let happen. So as well as their claim to sovereignty, and as well as a forcible transfer of people, they want to make sure that Palestinians feel cowed, feel marginalized, and don't feel they can assert themselves, or have any presence at all in the city. You described very effectively there how what we're witnessing now fits into a logic of settler colonialism. I mean, in terms of recent history, are we seeing, is what we're seeing now the norm? And it's just that the international media attention is more on it? Or is there something exceptional about what's going on now? And if the latter, why are we seeing this ramping up of repression? Well, I think actually what's happened over the past few weeks has to be interpreted as something very positive. Because everything that I have described is happening in Jerusalem every single day, every single week, every single month of every single year, since Israel began its occupation of the city. And it changes in speed or direction, but it continues in one inexorable towards one inexorable aim, which is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the city. So it's much better that we have moments where Palestinians are resisting that, rather than that happen in silence, you know, with the international community quote unquote, having their attention elsewhere. And the Palestinian resistance to that is cowed by arrests by other repressive measures in the city. So it's much better what the Palestinians in the city are able to confront this. And what's happened over the past few days, now the past few weeks, is that we've seen the entire city rise up in the most extraordinary way. If you walk down the streets, you see every single street corner, police and soldiers, but young men standing defiantly, standing their ground. You see people singing in the streets. You see people doing depth care at the entrances to the old city. The other day, the Israelis attempted to prevent Palestinians from inside Palestine, 1948 Palestine, from coming to pray at, during laser cutter, which is the most holy night of Ramadan, which is a few evenings ago, the Israelis prevented them from coming and they got off to their buses and they started walking towards Jerusalem and Palestinians from Jerusalem went to collect them in their cars and bring them here. You've seen this enormous explosion, this civic spirit across the city with people from all walks of life out in force and saying that we have a right to be here and saying that we whatever happens, we're going to fight for that for our right because the alternative is a complete expulsion and ethnic cleansing and ending of our way of life in the city. So actually what we've seen is an incredibly positive response to something that's continued in different ways and through different means by the Israelis throughout the entirety of their occupation and indeed to all Palestinian areas since its inception in 1948. So I think we have to definitely regard this as an incredibly positive thing and I don't think it represents an escalation by the Israelis whatsoever. It's just a continuation of the same policy, sometimes around thinking up, sometimes slowing them down as they see their opportunities in international arena development change. That was Akram Salhab, speaking to me from Jerusalem. I also spoke today to Muna Jajani who is currently based in London but who has family at risk of eviction in Sheikh Jura. So that's the community I was talking about before who are at risk of being evicted by Jewish settlers. Now the community of Sheikh Jura is largely made up of families who were resettled in Jerusalem by the UN and the Jordanian government in 1956 after having been expelled from the city during the Nakba in 1948. There are now hundreds of Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jura. When I spoke to Muna, she began by explaining to me in the historical context which explains why those homes are now under threat. 1967, the Six Day War happened again. Israel occupied the rest of Palestine and today Palestinians there, Palestinian Jerusalem, I found themselves mere residents of a city that they belong to. And being a mere residence means that you don't have citizenship rights, you're under military occupation. You are confronted with a new lexicon and a new way of living in the place. And what happened a few years after the Six Day War is that the residents of Sheikh Jura, this compound we talk about, they started receiving lawsuits filed against them by settler organizations claiming that this land is theirs, is the ownership of the settler organization and that the Palestinian families are there unlawfully. And of course all the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jura are rightful owners of their houses. I remember being a child hearing about the looming threat of evictions from the 1980s. We've been hearing about these lawsuits against us, but always with the hope that we shall prevail because our evidence is very clear that we belong to this land. We belong to Sheikh Jura and we have all the evidence to show that the Israeli core system has always dismissed our evidence and taken the side of the Israeli settlers. Although their evidence has never has been nullified, it has been really shown to be forged. Sheikh Jura connects different Palestinian communities and neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. It is our anchor, the heart of the city of Jerusalem. So the fact that we are today witnessing a core decision that has been decided to evict us from our house is totally a totally illegal decision. And we're trying all our best to confront it, whether through these courts, being on the ground and seeing how the Jerusalem residents have been protecting the city in all their might, whatever they can do, being there, being present and making a point, reaching out on social media. That was Muna Djajani speaking about the evictions in Sheikh Jura. Dalia, I want to go to you quickly for your thoughts on what we've just heard in that section. This is the problem, isn't it, with the stigmatization of anyone in public life who cares about internationalism. And I think that, you know, especially looking at the show that we've had today and sort of finishing with these scenes and finishing with, you know, what Akram and Muna were just saying. And, you know, after we've just talked about, you know, how with the slave party stuff, how it feels like we as sort of young, precarious people are getting so aggressively pushed out of political decision making and so pushed out of power. When you hear about the resistances in Sheikh Jura to these evictions and that long history of fighting back, it makes me think that we just don't have an option but to have hope and to resist, you know, if the residents of Sheikh Jura can fight in the face of literal dispossession, you know, dispossession that has the backing of local courts, of local army, of the state, then we have to, you know, hope is not a feeling, it's not an emotion and we can't rely on hope only when we feel it. It's a virtue and it's a duty to which we are bound. And I think as well, you know, the reason that these kinds of moments hold such significance for so many people is because it represents in such explicit terms a phenomenon that is true for so many oppressed people around the world. It demonstrates how, you know, through bureaucratic means, through cultural means, through economic, militaristic, geographic techniques, you know, as Akram outlined entire communities can be stripped of their personhood and they can be subjected to the sharpest edges of violence, state violence and, you know, what we see through things like the clearing of public space from markers of Arab culture or Palestinian culture, the denying of planning permissions to Palestinian residents and then turning around and saying, well, you know, you're here illegally so we can evict you. So this is, you know, one of many, the many clarifying lenses through which we can understand how entire communities are dehumanized and are stripped of their personhood and then all manners of violence against them can be justified. But it's also close to the hearts of so many people because of the insistence on living in the face of that, on the insistence on hoping and creating in the face of that kind of struggle. So it's the story of so many self-determination struggles around the world. It's the story of communities that insist on their own humanity in the face of dehumanization, in the face of their humanity being stripped away. And that is why I think it's so important to focus on the fact that there is a poetic and there is an ethic of hope in the face of that. And so we don't have a choice, especially here in the UK, to abdicate on our responsibility of protecting those who are the most marginalized from political life.