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Riot @ Temple Mount
Hat tip LGF. EFL.JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police stormed the square outside the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islamâs holiest sites, to confront stone-throwing Palestinians on Friday amid heightened tensions over Israelâs West Bank barrier. "We need our Holocaust II!" The clash at the shrine, often a flashpoint, coincided with another spate of protests in the West Bank against the barrier, now under World Court review for cutting into occupied territory that Palestinians want for a state. Like the World Court will be able to enforce a demand that the Israelis commit genosuicide? 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 within the shrine, which Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and Jews revere as the Temple Mount. Temple Mount it is then. He said police had mobilized to stop Palestinians in the sanctuary -- which covers a plateau in the Old City -- trying to stone worshippers standing below the compound at the Western Wall, which buttresses the hillside and is the most sacred site of Jewish prayer. Palestinians said police acted without provocation during the 30-minute clash. There was a mass shriek of pain as lips fell off. "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." Then his harp broke a string. Four Palestinian demonstrators and three police officers were lightly injured. A Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after Ariel Sharon, Israelâs opposition leader at the time and now prime minister, visited the compound, which is at the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Israel Posted by: Steve from Relto 2004-02-27 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=27035 |