Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh recently warned against a planned flag march on Sunday, May 29, by right-wing Israelis at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, stressing that should the march be held, it will be confronted with “all means.”

Speaking at an event organized by the Hamas movement in Gaza on May 22 to mark the first anniversary of the latest Israeli aggression on the coastal enclave, Haniyeh said, “There have been calls by settlers to storm Al-Aqsa and hold the flag march. I warn the enemy against committing such crimes.”

Haniyeh stressed that the “resistance in Jerusalem and the West Bank will not allow Jewish nonsense to take place in Al-Aqsa. We will confront this by all means and we will never allow Al-Aqsa to be violated.”

This year’s march is attracting exceptional clamor and media attention amid fears of full-on confrontations across the Palestinian territories in response to Israel’s approval of the event in a similar scenario to last year’s march, which was one of the reasons that provoked the 11-day war that killed 260 Palestinians and 14 Israelis.