OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 28 February 2004 — Israeli police yesterday stormed Al-Haram Al-Sharif, one of Islam’s holiest sites, to confront Palestinian protesters.
The storming coincided with another spate of protests in the West Bank against the barrier, now under World Court review for cutting into occupied territory that Palestinians want for a state.
Israeli police said officers had fired rubber bullets and tossed stun grenades after hundreds of Muslim worshipers at the Al-Aqsa compound “started rioting” at the end of Friday prayers.
He said police had mobilized to stop Palestinians from trying to disturb Jewish worshipers standing below the compound. Palestinians said police acted without provocation. “There was no provocation for such an Israeli attack,” Adnan Husseini, director of the Islamic Waqf, which oversees the compound, said. “This is despicable and unacceptable.”
Four Palestinian demonstrators and three police officers were lightly injured.
A Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after Ariel Sharon, Israel’s opposition leader at the time and now prime minister, visited the compound, which is at the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Israel seized East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally.
Earlier, soldiers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse 50 protesters in the West Bank town of Bethlehem near Rachel’s Tomb, revered by Muslims, Christians and Jews.
The army also fired tear gas near the boundary village of Qibya to break up a barrier protest.
Also yesterday, security sources said Israel had held talks with Egypt about ceding security control to Cairo over a corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border as part of a plan to evacuate Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli sources said Egypt may be interested in assuming a security role out of concern that Hamas would step in to fill the vacuum of an Israeli pullout from the fenced-in Gaza Strip.
Senior Israeli intelligence officials met Egyptian counterparts in Cairo earlier this month to discuss the possibility of Egypt taking responsibility over the several hundred-meter-wide corridor in southern Gaza, the sources said. “Israel is considering (handing over control),” an Israeli security source said. Egyptian officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The area known as the Philadelphia Road has been a major flashpoint of violence between Israeli troops and Palestinians during a more than three-year-old uprising.
A Palestinian on a bicycle blew himself up next to an Israeli military jeep in the Gaza Strip yesterday, but caused no casualties among its occupants, the army said.
Late yesterday, two Israeli civilians were shot dead when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on their car near the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank. “Initial details show that Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a civilian vehicle. Two people, a man and a woman, were critically injured and died later,” an Israeli military source said.
Kingdom Denies Al-Jazeera Report
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia yesterday denied a report by Al-Jazeera satellite channel that Riyadh had not paid its share of the Arab League budget for 2004. “The Kingdom has paid its full share of the budget,” Faisal Tarad, Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the League, told the Saudi Press Agency. The League issued a statement on Feb. 25 confirming receipt of the amount, Tarad said. He added Saudi Arabia had always honored its financial commitment to the League and other pan-Arab organizations.
