Feb. 27, 2004
By Gwen Ackerman
Photo: A Palestinian throws stones during clashes with Israeli forces at the construction site of the controversial Israeli security barrier near the West Bank village of Biddu February 26, 2004. Israeli forces killed two Palestinians protesting against Israel's West Bank barrier on Thursday, the first fatalities in demonstrations over the controversial project now under World Court review. (Nati Shohat/Flash 90 via Reuters)
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police stormed the square outside the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, to confront stone-throwing Palestinians on Friday amid heightened tensions over Israel's West Bank barrier.
The clash at the shrine, a frequent flashpoint, coincided with another spate of protests in the West Bank against the barrier, which is now under World Court review for cutting into occupied territory that Palestinians want for a state.
Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said officers had fired rubber bullets and tossed stun grenades after hundreds of Muslim worshippers "started rioting" at the end of Friday prayers near the holy site, which Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and Jews revere as the Temple Mount.
He said police had mobilized to stop Palestinians trying to stone worshippers standing below the compound at the Western Wall, the most sacred site of Jewish prayer. Palestinians said police acted without provocation during the 30-minute clash.
"Hundreds of Muslims threw rocks and rioted," Kleiman said.
He said the police had repelled Palestinians trying to approach the edge of the hilltop compound, but that only two stones fell onto the Western Wall plaza, hitting no one.
"There was no provocation for such an Israeli attack," Adnan Husseini, director of the Islamic Waqf, which oversees the compound, told Reuters. "This is despicable and unacceptable."
Four Palestinian demonstrators and three police officers were lightly injured.
A Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after Ariel Sharon, Israel's opposition leader at the time and now prime minister, visited the compound, which is at the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Temple Mount is Judaism's holiest site.
Israel seized East Jerusalem, including the ancient walled Old City, where the compound is located, in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally.
TENSIONS OVER BARRIER
Middle East tensions worsened this week as the World Court in The Hague held hearings into the legality of Israel's barrier. Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in a crowd demonstrating near the steel-and-concrete barrier on Thursday.
On Friday, witnesses said soldiers had used teargas and rubber bullets to disperse 50 stone-throwers in the West Bank town of Bethlehem near Rachel's Tomb, revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims as the burial site of the biblical matriarch.
Near the village of Qibya, outside the city of Ramallah, the army also used tear gas to break up a stone-throwing demonstration.
Also on Friday, security sources said Israel had held talks with Egypt this month about ceding security control to Cairo over a narrow corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border as part of a plan to evacuate Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli sources said Egypt might be interested in assuming a security role out of concern that the militant Islamic group Hamas would step in to fill the vacuum of an Israeli pullout from the fenced-in Gaza Strip.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, on a visit to Dublin, said he did not think Egypt wanted control of the corridor in southern Gaza but added: "We are working with them."
The several hundred-meter-wide zone has been the scene of frequent clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen, and Israel has launched repeated raids to destroy tunnels used to smuggle arms across the border from Egypt.
Early on Friday, militants fired an anti-tank missile that hit a house in a Jewish settlement near Khan Younis, just north of Rafah, the Israeli army said. Part of the house collapsed but there were no casualties since it was empty at the time.
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