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Israeli Police Drive Protesters
From Holy Muslim Shrine

By Gwen Ackerman
10-4-2

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police firing stun grenades burst into one of Islam's holiest sites in Jerusalem on Friday to disperse Palestinians who had stoned policemen guarding the Western Wall plaza below -- holy to Jews.
 
The Palestinians were protesting at new U.S. legislation lending support to Israel's claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital, including the Old City with its volatile mix of Islamic, Jewish and Christian shrines.
 
Witnesses said about 50 security police entered the grand mosque compound known as al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims and as Temple Mount to Jews and used stun grenades and tear gas to drive back about 30 stone throwers.
 
Witnesses reported at least five people bleeding from minor wounds in the compound's clinic after the clash, which occurred after Palestinians had completed their Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques.
 
Israeli national police spokesman Gil Kleiman said Palestinian youths stoned police guards stationed at the entrance of a pathway that runs up from the side of the plaza through al-Moghrabi gate to the mosque compound.
 
"We thought they were intending to throw rocks into the plaza where (Jewish) worshippers were so police entered the compound and fired stun grenades," Kleiman told Reuters.
 
"People were told to leave the Wall plaza below, and the Waqf (Islamic religious trust that administers al-Haram al-Sharif) then helped calm the situation down. It is quiet now. Worshippers have returned."
 
Control of East Jerusalem, with its walled Old City and shrines, is one of the most intractable issues in the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 
The dispute sharpened when President Bush signed legislation on Monday requiring Washington to identify Jerusalem as the Israeli capital in future documents -- though the administration says U.S. policy on Jerusalem has not changed.
 
Palestinians who have been waging an uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for two years want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
 
Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the other territories, in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally
 
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat led a chorus of condemnation in the Muslim world on Wednesday of the U.S. legislation, calling it a "catastrophe that Muslims and Christians should not let pass in silence."
 
After Bush signed the legislation, the White House stressed it did not change its policy on the need for negotiating a solution to the status of Jerusalem.
 
PALESTINIANS RALLY AGAINST U.S. LAW
 
But Palestinians were not reassured. Around 2,000 demonstrated against the legislation in Gaza City on Friday, carrying banners saying "Jerusalem will not be taken away."
 
At least 1,576 Palestinians and 602 Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian uprising that broke out in September 2000 after U.S.-brokered negotiations on a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza foundered.
 
In other violence on Friday, Israeli troops fired at a taxi driver breaking a curfew in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus but instead hit and critically wounded a 12-year-old Palestinian boy standing nearby, witnesses and medics said.
 
An army spokesman said soldiers on patrol in Nablus, the largest stronghold of Palestinian militants in the West Bank, fired after being targeted by gunmen in the vicinity. He had no information on civilian casualties.
 
Witnesses said the boy, Ibrahim al-Madani, was hit by shots aimed at the cab driver who had jumped out of his car to avoid troops in jeeps trying to detain him near the entrance of the Askar Palestinian refugee camp.
 
In Jenin, another of the six West Bank cities under army occupation, Palestinian witnesses said Israeli troops fired at random and wounded four civilians, after being shot at by Palestinian gunmen during a tank patrol.
 
The army spokesman said troops fired toward the source of shots aimed at a patrol seconds earlier.
 
Palestinians obtained self-rule in towns under interim peace deals during the 1990s, but Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank in June in response to suicide bombings inside Israel by Palestinian militants who have spearheaded the uprising.
 
Military curfews slapped on West Bank cities in June have been eased in some places but Nablus residents have been under almost continuous curfew for more than 100 days.
 
Jenin and Ramallah, where Arafat is based, have also been under curfew much of the time.
 
Israel says the curfews stop suicide bombers. Palestinians say they constitute collective punishment because they confine hundreds of thousands of people to their homes for long periods, stopping them from working or getting essential supplies.





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