OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 5 October — Israeli soldiers firing stun grenades burst into one of Islam’s holiest sites in Jerusalem yesterday to disperse Palestinians who had stoned troops guarding the Western Wall plaza below that is holy to Jews. The Palestinians were protesting at new US legislation lending support to Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital, including the Old City with its volatile mix of shrines revered by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.
Thousands of Palestinians including hundreds of self-styled “martyrs-in-waiting” held anti-American rallies in the Gaza Strip and West Bank where an uprising against Israel for independence has been going on for two years.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, violence flared when Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian in the northern border village of Barta’a, Palestinian security sources said. Mohammed Ali Zeid, 15, was throwing stones at an Israeli Army position, the sources said. In Askar refugee camp in Nablus, a 12-year-old Palestinian was killed after being hit by Israeli bullets, Palestinian medical sources said.
In the northern West Bank town of Jenin, the Israeli Army staged a fresh raid yesterday morning, sparking clashes that left another three Palestinians injured, Palestinian security sources said. A group of young stone-throwers confronted Israeli tanks and jeeps as they stormed the city center, and soldiers retaliated by firing live bullets, the sources said.
Local Palestinians denied there was any disturbance, saying the youth was shot after he refused an army order to get away from a window in his home where he was watching soldiers enforcing a curfew in the street outside.
In Jerusalem, witnesses said about 50 security police pushed into the Grand Mosque compound known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif to Muslims and used stun grenades and tear gas to drive back about 30 stone throwers. Witnesses reported at least five people wounded in the clash, which occurred after Palestinians had completed their Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques.
Adnan Al-Husseini, head of the Waqf religious trust that runs Al-Haram Al-Sharif, said that up to 5,000 worshipers had packed the compound for prayers and afterward a small number stayed on to vent their frustrations over the US law. 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 Western Wall plaza through Al-Moghrabi gate to the mosque compound.
Thousands of Palestinians including would-be “martyrs” rallied yesterday to protest at new US legislation. Activists from the resistance group Hamas said the bill signed by US President George W. Bush signaled “further American support for the Zionist enemy” and vowed to step up attacks in a two-year-old Palestinian uprising against Israel.
The demonstration was called by a coalition of Palestinian factions, including Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement and the resistance group Hamas, which demanded an urgent meeting of the Al-Qods committee of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. An armed offshoot of Fatah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, announced over loudspeakers that its attacks against Israel would continue.
At least 3,000 Hamas supporters led by the movement’s spiritual leader and founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, marched in the Gaza Strip’s Jabalya refugee camp after Friday prayers. Yassin vowed that the Palestinian resistance would continue “to employ all methods until the defeat of the Zionist enemy.”
