JERUSALEM, 23 May 2005 — US first lady Laura Bush faced Palestinian and Israeli protests yesterday as she toured Jewish and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Wearing a black headscarf and accompanied by the wife of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, Mrs. Bush spent a few moments of silence in the women’s section of the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site.
Among the bystanders, dozens of young women waved photographs of Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American who was jailed for life in 1987 in the United States on charges of spying for Israel. A slightly larger group of men, some of them symbolically handcuffed, also shouted slogans calling for Pollard’s release.
At the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the response to her visit was equally hostile, with a handful of protesters shouting “Death to America” as she entered the golden-topped Dome of the Rock.
But the visit passed off peacefully, arousing little interest among local Palestinian stallholders, who dismissed the trip by the wife of US President George W. Bush as little more than a photo opportunity for the media.
“It’s mainly a publicity stunt,” said Mazen, a 50-year-old carpet seller. “What we want to see is results on the ground. President Bush promised to resolve the conflict two years ago, but nothing has changed.”
“Band of criminals,” snorted Hassanin, 43, referring to the Bush family. “We don’t care about any American presidents or their wives. They don’t help us.”
Only Hamas commented on her visit to the mosque compound, saying it demonstrated US support for Israel’s claim to occupied East Jerusalem where the site is located.
This visit “confirms the American position that Jerusalem is the capital of the Zionists, and this will give more legality to the continued occupation of this place, which is of prime importance for Muslims,” Hamas said. “We do not reject any visit by anyone to the Al-Aqsa but we see Mrs. Bush’s visit as an attempt to whiten the face of America after the ugly crime carried out by US investigators against the Qur’an,” it said.
The statement was referring to a report by US magazine Newsweek, since retracted, that interrogators at a US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had desecrated the Qur’an in a bid to rattle Muslim prisoners.
The disturbances during her trip to the holy site showed “what an emotional place this is as we go from each one of these very, very holy spots to the next,” Mrs. Bush said later during a stop in the West Bank oasis town of Jericho.
