Worshippers clash at holy site
Injuries, arrests as Muslims celebrate Eid-ul-Adha and Jews mark Tish B’Av holiday
JERUSALEM: Several protesting Palestinians have been arrested and dozens injured following fierce clashes in the old city of Jerusalem as tens of thousands of Muslims marked the Eid-ulAdha holiday and hundreds of Jews marked the Tisha B’Av holiday.
Muslim worshippers had been called to attend prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, on Sunday to ward off attempts by religious Jews to enter the mosque compound as the latter commemorated the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, first by the Babylonians in 587 BC and then a second time by the Romans in 70 AD.
Some Jewish extremists from the Temple Mount (the Jewish name for the Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound) faithful want to pull down the mosque and build the third Jewish temple in its place.
While the Israeli authorities say this will never happen, their decision to allow Jewish worshippers into the Islamic compound is a violation of an understanding between Israel and the Muslim Waqf, which administers Al-Aqsa, forbidding Jews entry to the compound to pray, especially on one of the holiest days of Islam.
An earlier decision by Jerusalem police not to allow Jews into the temple earlier on Sunday was later reversed, heightening Muslim fears that a decision to divide the Mosque into days allowing Muslim worshippers only, and other days allowing Jewish worshippers only, as has been done in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in West Bank, is on the cards.
As Jewish visitors began to enter the mosque compound clashes broke out when Israeli Special Forces, including paramilitary police, rushed in, accusing Palestinians of throwing stones and chairs at them and threatening Jewish visitors.
The sounds of tear gas canisters exploding and rubber bullets being fired could be heard all over the old city as security forces, followed by journalists, interrupted bewildered tour groups walking through the old city quarter’s narrow cobbled streets.
In the bloody confrontations, dozens of Palestinians were injured and several Israeli police officers.
Videos of Palestinians being beaten by Israeli police, with blood running down their heads and faces, were circulated on social media before medics were able to evacuate them to hospital.
Several Palestinians were arrested, frog-marched out of the Al-Aqsa compound by Israeli police and taken in for interrogation.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi called on the international community “to hold Israel accountable and to pressure it to cease its violations”.
The response from several armed Palestinian opposition groups was even more foreboding with spokespersons from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, among others, threatening revenge.
These threats followed several military clashes between armed Palestinians and the Israeli military on Gaza’s volatile border with Israel over the last 10 days.
Early on Sunday morning an armed Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he tried to break through the fence dividing the coastal enclave from Israel. The incident came a day after the army said it killed four heavily armed Palestinians who attempted to sneak into Israel from Gaza, just over a week after a Palestinian gunman wounded three soldiers in the same area before being killed.
The Gaza Strip is on the verge of an explosion, with 2 million people crammed into an area of 365km², making it an open-air prison.
Gazans continue to weather a deteriorating humanitarian situation with high unemployment, poorly-functioning infrastructure, and the inability of most citizens to leave to pursue education opportunities and business interests abroad, or to travel for medical treatment. |