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Clashes erupted in the West Bank yesterday after weekly prayers while security forces deployed heavily around Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque which reopened following the killing of a Palestinian by police. |
Al Aqsa, in the Old City, and adjacent neighbourhoods have seen months of violence, and the mosque compound has been a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to perceived Jewish attempts to take control of it.
Jerusalem was relatively calm yesterday a day after youths clashed with police following the shooting dead of Muataz Hijazi, a Palestinian suspected of trying to murder hardline Jewish rabbi Yehuda Glick, linked to the tensions at Al Aqsa.
During the unrest on Thursday, Israel ordered a rare closure of the mosque compound, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, but the area reopened yesterday.
Fearing unrest after Hijazi’s killing, hundreds of additional police were deployed around the Al Aqsa mosque, restricting entry for Muslim men to those over 50.
Prayers were more sparsely attended than usual but held without incident.
Azzam al-Khatib, head of the Islamic Waqf body which oversees Jerusalem’s Muslim holy sites, gave a sharp sermon at Al Aqsa, calling Thursday a “black day” and a “catastrophe”.
Shortly afterwards, a handful of Palestinian youths outside the Old City threw stones at police, who quickly dispersed them, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.
In the West Bank about 300 Palestinians threw stones at Israeli security forces at the Qalandiya checkpoint just north of Jerusalem.
The Israelis responded with live fire and rubber bullets and wounded around a dozen people, Palestinian security sources and medics said.
Jerusalem’s Old City was teeming with additional police, including many in riot gear, after an Israeli clampdown on the compound.
The closure was the first for decades and prompted a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the move as an Israeli “declaration of war”.
The resident imam at Abbas’s headquarters in Ramallah echoed the president’s words, saying the closure had been a “declaration of war ... to Muslims across the world” and calling for people to “defend” Al Aqsa.
Jerusalem has been shaken by months of unrest sparked by the murder of a Palestinian teenager in July in revenge for the killings of three Jewish teenagers in the West Bank.
A 50-day war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in July and August intensified protests and clashes in the Holy City.
A controversial visit to Al Aqsa in 2000 by Ariel Sharon, who later became Israel’s prime minister, sparked the second deadly Palestinian Intifada, or uprising.
Police, some in riot gear, manned a series of checkpoints leading from the Old City’s outer gates all the way to the compound yesterday.
They checked identity papers of people passing between the barricades, both those on their way to pray and those who worked nearby.
Zuheir Dana, 67, said he was unable to get from his shop to his home.
“I wanted just to get home, which is about 50m away from the Al Aqsa compound, but police didn’t let me through,” he said.
