Israel’s governing coalition on Sunday faced a new split when Arab-Israeli party Raam “suspended” its membership, after violence around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site that wounded 170 people over the weekend.
The government — an ideologically disparate mix of left-wing, hardline Jewish nationalist and religious parties, as well as Raam — had already lost its razor-thin majority this month when a religious Jewish member quit in a dispute over leavened bread distribution at hospitals.
Since then, days of violence around Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque complex, sacred to Muslims and Jews, put Raam under pressure to quit, too.
Photo: AFP
“If the government continues its steps against the people of Jerusalem ... we will resign as a bloc,” Raam said in a statement.
The declaration came hours after more than 20 Palestinians and Israelis were wounded in incidents in and around the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The latest clashes take the number of wounded since Friday to more than 170, at a tense time when the Jewish Passover festival coincides with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
They follow deadly violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank, which started late last month and has resulted in the deaths of 36 people.
Early on Sunday morning, police said that “hundreds” of Palestinian demonstrators inside the mosque complex started gathering piles of stones, shortly before the arrival of Jewish visitors.
Jews are allowed to visit, but not to pray at the site, the holiest place in Judaism and third-holiest in Islam.
Israeli police said that its forces had entered the complex to “remove” the demonstrators and “re-establish order.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said 19 Palestinians were injured, including at least five who were hospitalized.
Some had been wounded with rubber-coated steel bullets, it added.
Outside the Old City, which lies in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, Palestinian youths threw rocks at passing buses, smashing their windows, resulting in seven people being treated for light wounds, Shaare Zedek Hospital said.
The police said that they had arrested 18 Palestinians, while Israeli Minister of Public Security Omer Bar-Lev said that Israel would “act strongly against anyone who dares to use terrorism against Israeli citizens.”
Bennett had said the security forces “continue to receive a free hand ... for any action that will provide security to the citizens of Israel,” while stressing that every effort should be made to allow members of all religions to worship in Jerusalem.
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