Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police yesterday clashed at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound, injuring at least 20 protesters, medics said, in the first face-off in the area since the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.
Police said that before dawn on Friday “dozens of masked men” marched into al-Aqsa chanting and setting off fireworks before crowds hurled stones toward the Western Wall — considered Judaism’s holiest site where people can pray.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that so far “20 wounded have been taken to hospitals in Jerusalem in connection with the ongoing clashes,” adding that “there are still wounded at the site.”
Photo: AFP
Police said three officers were injured.
Witnesses said protesters threw stones at Israeli security forces, who fired rubber-coated bullets toward some of them.
An Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer said more than 100 Palestinians were seen hurling projectiles toward the security forces.
The latest clashes come after three tense weeks of deadly violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and as the Jewish festival of Passover and Christian Easter overlap with Ramadan.
Al-Aqsa is Islam’s third-holiest site. Jews refer to it as the Temple Mount, referencing two temples said to have stood there in antiquity.
The compound is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, falling within Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.
Police said protesters carried “stones, wooden planks and large objects, which were then used in a violent riot.”
“Despite these actions, police forces waited until the prayer was over,” a statement said.
“Crowds then began to hurl rocks in the direction of the Western Wall ... and as the violence surged, police were forced to enter the grounds surrounding the mosque,” it said, adding that police “did not enter the mosque.”
Before Ramadan began this month, Israel and Jordan, which serves as custodian of East Jerusalem’s holy sites, stepped up talks to avoid a repeat of last year’s violence.
Last year during Ramadan, clashes that flared in Jerusalem, including between Israeli forces and Palestinians visiting al-Aqsa, led to 11 days of devastating conflict between Israel and the Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.
Israel has poured additional forces into the West Bank, and is reinforcing its wall and fence barrier with the occupied territory after four deadly attacks in the Jewish state that have mostly killed civilians in the past three weeks.
Fourteen people have been killed in the attacks since March 22, including a shooting spree in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv, allegedly carried out by a Palestinian attacker from Jenin.
Twenty-one Palestinians have been killed in that time, including assailants who targeted Israelis, an AFP tally showed.
On Thursday, Israel announced that it would block crossings from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Israel from yesterday afternoon through today, the first two nights of the week-long Passover festival, and potentially keep the crossings closed for the rest of the holiday.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has given the country’s security forces a free hand to “defeat terror” in the territory, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War, warning that there would “not be limits” for the campaign.
Some of the attacks in Israel were carried out by Arab citizens of Israel linked to or inspired by the Islamic State group, others by Palestinians, and cheered by militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Three Palestinians died on Thursday as Israeli forces launched fresh raids into the West Bank flashpoint district of Jenin, a week after the Bnei Brak attack.
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