Show of force in Jerusalem
Israeli police clash with Palestinian protesters outside Old City on holy night.
JERUSALEM — Israeli police on Saturday clashed with Palestinian protesters outside Jerusalem’s Old City during the holiest night of Ramadan, in a show of force that threatened to deepen the holy city’s worst religious unrest in several years. Earlier, police blocked busloads of pilgrims headed to Jerusalem to worship.
Police defended their actions as security moves, but these were seen as provocations by Muslims who accuse Israel of threatening their freedom of worship. Competing claims in East Jerusalem, home to the city’s most sensitive Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites, lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have triggered major rounds of violence in the past.
The unrest came a day after violence in which Palestinian medics said more than 200 Palestinians were wounded at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound and elsewhere in Jerusalem. Friday’s violence drew condemnations from Israel’s Arab allies and calls for calm from the United States and Europe and the United Nations, and prompted the Arab League to schedule an emergency meeting on Monday.
Police chief Kobi Shabtai said he was deploying more police in Jerusalem following Friday night’s clashes, which left 18 police officers wounded. After weeks of nightly violence, Israelis and Palestinians were bracing for more conflict in the coming days.
Saturday night was Laylat al Qadr, or the Night of Destiny, the most sacred in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Islamic authorities estimated 90,000 people were gathered for intense nighttime prayers at Al Aqsa, the third-holiest site in Islam.
“The right to demonstrate will be respected but public disturbances will be met with force and zero tolerance. I call on everyone to act responsibly and with restraint,” Shabtai said.
Paramilitary border police marched along the streets of East Jerusalem in full riot gear, with some mounted on horses. In one instance, police clashed with protesters outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate after being pelted with water bottles. Police patrols fired stun grenades as they moved through the area, and a police truck periodically fired a water cannon.
One man with a small boy yelled at the police as they marched by. “You should be ashamed!” he said.
Earlier, police reported clashes in the Old City, near Al Aqsa, and in the nearby East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, where dozens of Palestinians are fighting attempts by Israeli settlers to evict them from their homes. Police reported several arrests, and Palestinian medics said two protesters were hospitalized after being beaten by police. Police said one officer was struck in the face with a rock.
Earlier Saturday, police stopped a convoy of buses that were filled with Arab citizens on the main highway heading to Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said police stopped the buses for a security check.
Muslims fast from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, and travelers, upset that they were stopped without explanation on a hot day, exited the buses and blocked the highway in protest. Kan showed video of the protesters praying, chanting slogans and marching along the highway toward Jerusalem. The road was reopened several hours later.
Ibtisam Maraana, an Arab member of parliament, accused police of a “terrible attack” on freedom of religion. “Police: Remember that they are citizens, not enemies,” she wrote on Twitter.
Protests broke out at the beginning of Ramadan three weeks ago when Israel restricted gatherings at a popular meeting spot outside Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel removed the restrictions, briefly calming the situation, but protests have reignited in recent days over the threatened evictions in East Jerusalem, which is claimed by both sides in their decades-old conflict.
Other recent developments, including the cancellation of Palestinian elections; deadly violence in which a Palestinian teenager, two Palestinian gunmen and a young Israeli man were killed in separate incidents in the West Bank; and the election to Israel’s parliament of a far-right Jewish nationalist party; also have contributed to the tense atmosphere.