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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Violence erupts at Islam's Third Holiest Shrine™ in Jerusalem |
| 2007-02-09 |
| JERUSALEM - Israeli police stormed the grounds of Islam's third-holiest shrine Friday, firing stun grenades and tear gas to disperse thousands of Muslim worshippers who hurled stones, bottles and trash in an eruption of outrage over Israeli renovation work nearby. Much seething to commence, I guess. When are the Joooos gonna use real bullets for this sort of stuff? The clash at the end of noon prayers came after days of mounting tensions over the work and raised concern that protests at the site could spread to the West Bank and Gaza, as they did at the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000. No serious injuries were reported. Kinda makes me wonder what the Grand Mufti was spewing at Friday papers. Things that make you go hhhuuuummmm. About 200 police streamed on to the hilltop compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, to try to quell rioting over the repair work on a centuries-old ramp, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Let the freakin' ramp fall in! Then you'll see real seething! Clouds of tear gas rose up at the holy site and stun grenades set off sharp booms. A doctor treating some of the injured, Dr. Khalil el-Baba, said officers fired rubber bullets at protesters, but police denied that. "Manolo, get the Zionist Death Ray warmed up!" Riot police with their helmet visors pulled down scuffled with Muslim worshippers, some of them middle-aged or elderly. Medics tended several injured people lying on the stone pavement. Jewish worshippers were evacuated from the Western Wall plaza at the foot of the compound. How come when you're rioting while Muslim™, it's "worship," as it is when you're a Joooo minding your own bidness at the Western Wall? The situation grew especially volatile after some 150 protesters barricaded themselves inside the Al Aqsa mosque at the complex. "Manolo, how much longer does the Zionist Death Ray need to warm up?" But police did not enter the mosque. The protesters began to leave about 90 minutes after they holed up inside the building, following negotiations between officers and Muslim representatives, negotiators said. Mistake #1: Police not entering that moskkk. Three hours after the initial clash, however, police and demonstrators were still skirmishing in the narrow alleyways and on the rooftops of the Old City. Near Lion's Gate, police fired stun grenades after teenagers threw stones, iron bars and at least one firebomb at them, police said. The cobblestone walkways in the area were littered with rubble and vegetables thrown by protesters. Even as the violence subsided, passions remained inflamed. Only the AP could write something so full of feeling and pass it off as fact. "There is no justification for what they did today, and we think it was pre-orchestrated to bring fears to the spirits of the worshippers angry about the Israeli dig," said Adnan Husseini, chairman of the Waqf, the Muslim trust that oversees the shrine. Now if a Jooo had said that, I'd agree with the quote verbatim. But, the cog dis still abounds between seething, violence-prone Muslims who claim the Joooos can "bring fears" just 2 hours later. Seventeen protesters and 19 police officers were slightly injured in the melee at the mosque, and 17 rioters were arrested, Rosenfeld said. More at link. |
| Posted by:BA |