Mahmoud Abbas makes remarks during Fatah's 48th anniversary. Photo: MEMRI.

JNS.org – Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement declared that this Friday will be a “day of rage” in Jerusalem, calling on Palestinian “fighters” to defend the Al-Aqsa mosque amid growing tensions between Jewish and Muslim residents of Israel’s capital.

“Fatah calls to its fighters and to the masses of the Palestinian people to aid the Al-Aqsa mosque and occupied Jerusalem,” the official PA news agency WAFA reported, according to a Palestinian Media Watch translation.

Fatah also called on Palestinians to consider “the desecration of Al-Aqsa as a declaration of a religious war against the Palestinian people and the Arab Islamic nations.”

The call followed Israel’s decision to close the Temple Mount to Jewish and Muslim worshippers after an Arab man’s attempted assassination of activist Yehuda Glick, a promoter of Jewish access to the Temple Mount. The move also comes against the backdrop of weeks of increased Muslim riots and assaults on Jewish residents, including the recent terror attack on a Jerusalem light rail station that killed two people. Yet the Israeli police decided to re-open the Temple Mount after pressure from the U.S. and Muslim leaders.