For Muslims around the world, Ramadan carries a particular quality of stillness — the pre-dawn meal eaten in the dark, the fast held through the heat of the day, the relief of iftar shared with family, the long communal prayers stretching into the night. For Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and blockade, that stillness is conditional, bureaucratically managed, and sometimes shattered by force.
This is not metaphor. It is documented, repeated, year by year.
The Permit Wall Around Al-Aqsa
Al-Aqsa Mosque compound — the third holiest site in Islam, known to Muslims as Al-Haram Al-Sharif — sits inside occupied East Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and subsequently annexed it in a move never recognized as legal under international law, including by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 478 (1980). The roughly three million Palestinians living in the West Bank hold neither Israeli citizenship nor permanent residency in Jerusalem. To reach Al-Aqsa during Ramadan, they require a permit issued by Israeli military and civil authorities.
The system is administered selectively and inconsistently. In recent years, Israeli authorities have imposed age-based restrictions — permitting entry only to men above a certain age (typically 40 to 55, varying by year) and women above a lower threshold, while younger men are frequently excluded entirely. Precise permit numbers are not always published in advance, and the criteria shift. Human rights organization Al-Haq has documented the permit regime as a form of institutionalized discrimination restricting Palestinian freedom of worship and movement, rights protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a High Contracting Party.
The effect is concrete and personal. A man in his thirties from Nablus, whose father prays the full twenty nights of tarawih at Al-Aqsa each Ramadan, cannot accompany him. The distance between Nablus and Jerusalem is approximately 65 kilometers. The bureaucratic distance, for him, is absolute.
Palestinian citizens of Israel may enter Al-Aqsa without a permit, but they too face periodic closures and deployment of police at the gates. Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel has repeatedly challenged discriminatory policing measures at and around the compound during Ramadan.
The Raids: 2021 and 2023
Permit restrictions are the chronic condition. The raids represent acute rupture.
In April 2021, during the final ten days of Ramadan — the most sacred stretch of the Islamic calendar, when many Muslims intensify prayer and some perform itikaf (a spiritual retreat inside the mosque) — Israeli police entered Al-Aqsa with stun grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets. Video footage, widely verified, showed worshippers struck inside the mosque itself, with windows broken and carpets stained. OCHA oPt reported that hundreds of Palestinians were injured across the compound and surrounding area during that period. The events contributed directly to the escalation that became the May 2021 Gaza–Israel conflict, in which Gaza’s Ministry of Health recorded more than 250 Palestinian deaths over eleven days.
In April 2023, the pattern repeated. Israeli police raided Al-Aqsa during the night of 5 April — again in the final days of Ramadan, and this time coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Passover, a period Israeli authorities cite as requiring heightened “security” management of the site. Police used batons and stun grenades against worshippers who had gathered for night prayer. OCHA oPt and multiple journalists on the ground documented the raid. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported dozens injured. Footage showed police dragging worshippers from within the mosque, consistent with accounts published by Human Rights Watch.
The Israeli government described both interventions as responses to worshippers stockpiling stones or fireworks inside the compound. Independent human rights observers and journalists on the ground described the police action as disproportionate, initiated against people at prayer. The legal framework at stake — the right to worship at a holy site — is addressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 2253 (ES-V) and subsequent resolutions affirming the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to occupied East Jerusalem.
West Bank Checkpoints: The Feast That Must Wait
Outside Jerusalem, the West Bank’s checkpoint and closure system intensifies during Ramadan in ways that affect the rhythms of daily religious life directly.
Israel operates more than 700 permanent and temporary obstacles across the West Bank, according to OCHA oPt monitoring data. During Ramadan — particularly when the holiday coincides with Israeli Jewish holidays, as in 2023 — the military frequently issues additional closure orders, restricting Palestinian movement between districts and to Israel. The stated security rationale does not vary with the holiday; the impact on Palestinian families does.
Workers holding permits to enter Israel for employment — the permit system itself a feature of Israeli control over Palestinian labor documented by B’Tselem — may find those permits suspended or their crossing hours reduced. Families separated by internal closure orders cannot gather for iftar. Extended families spread across Area A, Area B, and Area C (the administrative divisions imposed by the Oslo II Accord and maintained under Israeli military authority) face internal movement restrictions that make something as ordinary as breaking the fast together a logistical obstacle course.
OCHA oPt’s closure monitoring has documented specific Ramadan-period increases in flying checkpoints — surprise mobile roadblocks set up and dismantled by the military — that intercept vehicles traveling between Palestinian cities in the evening, the hours when families are moving toward iftar gatherings.
Iftar in Gaza: The Electricity Question
Gaza’s relationship to Ramadan is shaped by a siege that has been in place in varying degrees since 2007, when Israel imposed a comprehensive blockade following Hamas’s takeover of the Strip. The blockade — which OCHA oPt, UNCTAD, and Human Rights Watch have each characterized as collective punishment prohibited under international humanitarian law — controls the entry of goods, the movement of people, and, critically, fuel.
Gaza’s electricity infrastructure, damaged repeatedly in successive military operations, runs on a combination of Israeli supply lines, the Gaza Power Plant, and Egyptian supply. For years before the October 2023 escalation, Gaza received between 8 and 12 hours of electricity per day on average, according to OCHA oPt reporting. During Ramadan, this means iftar is prepared on gas burners when available, candles are lit on tables set for breaking the fast, and the extended tarawih prayers happen in mosques whose fans and lights run on generators that depend on fuel supplies the blockade constrains.
There is something in this image — a family gathered in the dark around a shared meal, observing one of the world’s great acts of communal faith — that resists abstraction. The darkness is not atmospheric. It is the direct result of a policy. Gisha — Legal Center for Freedom of Movement has documented in granular detail how Israeli restrictions on fuel transfers to Gaza have contributed to the electricity crisis across multiple years.
Ramadan, for Palestinians, does not pause the occupation. The occupation does not pause for Ramadan.
Sources
- OCHA oPt — Closure and access monitoring reports; Ramadan-period incident reports (2021, 2023); Gaza electricity tracking data. ochaopt.org
- Al-Haq — Documentation of permit restrictions and freedom of worship violations in occupied East Jerusalem. alhaq.org
- Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — Legal interventions regarding Al-Aqsa policing. adalah.org
- Human Rights Watch — Reporting on April 2023 Al-Aqsa raids; Gaza blockade as collective punishment. hrw.org
- B’Tselem — The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories — Permit system and checkpoint documentation. btselem.org
- Gisha — Legal Center for Freedom of Movement — Fuel and electricity restriction documentation, Gaza. gisha.org
- UNCTAD — Reports on the economic and humanitarian impact of the Gaza blockade. unctad.org
- UN Security Council Resolution 478 (1980) — Non-recognition of Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem.
- UN General Assembly Resolution 2253 (ES-V) — Applicability of Geneva Conventions to occupied East Jerusalem.
- Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) — ICRC, protections for civilian populations under occupation. icrc.org
