The coronavirus has limited Ramadan prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the second year in a row, with Israeli-enforced restrictions preventing thousands of Palestinians from worshipping at the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Citing the pandemic’s “high morbidity rates” in the Palestinian territories, Israel gave permits to 10,000 fully vaccinated Palestinians — a fraction of the hundreds of thousands living in the West Bank and Israel who usually attend Friday prayers during the Islamic holy month.
