Posted on 03/16/2010 4:01:34 AM PDT by SJackson
Major riots in Wadi Joz; 15 arrested, 2 cops hurt as protesters clash with police.
Dozens of masked Palestinians were hurling rocks at Israeli police and burning tires in the east Jerusalem neighborhoods Wadi Joz, Issawiya and Abu Tor on Tuesday.
More than one hundred policemen, some of them on horseback, were trying to disperse the crowd at Wadi Joz, where some two hundred Arabs were throwing rocks at security forces. Stun grenades, tear gas and other measures were being used against the rioters.
Twenty five Palestinians have been arrested so far on suspicion of stone-throwing and disruptions. In addition, a Jewish activist who attempted to enter the Temple Mount through the Mughrabi Gate was arrested after he attacked policemen barring his way.
Police used stun grenades to disperse dozens of Arabs who were blocking the Majlis Gate, one of the Old City entrances to the Temple Mount. The protesters, some of them chanting slogans, were pushed back into the nearby Via Delarosa.
A border policeman was lightly wounded by a rock thrown at him. He was evacuated for medical attention. Another policeman was lightly wounded by a rock that hit his leg. Palestinians reported nine casualties.
Two buses of Arabs from the North on their way to Jerusalem on Tuesday were turned back by police, who suspected that the passengers were heeding the call to take part in unrest in the capital. One passenger was arrested after he attacked a policeman who boarded the bus.
Overnight Monday two Molotov cocktails were thrown at Jewish-owned Beit Yehonatan building in Silwan, causing light damage to the structure.
Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police fired stun grenades to disperse dozens of protesters at one site. He said village elders helped end protests at another site.
Police presence is high after Hamas militants joined the Islamic Movement's call for a "day of rage" against Israel following its rededication of a synagogue in the Old City.
Monday’s rededication of the historic Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter brought police to brace for the possibility of renewed clashes with Muslims in the capital after PA officials this week called for them to gather on the Temple Mount.
On Sunday, top Fatah official and holder of its Jerusalem portfolio, Khatem Abd el-Kader, called on Palestinians to “converge on Al-Aksa to save it” from “Israeli attempts to destroy the mosque and replace it with the temple.”
In addition, dozens of busloads carrying hundreds of Israeli Beduin from the Negev will make their way to Jerusalem every day this week, to protest what they say are Israeli threats against the Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount.
The protests, organized largely by the Islamic Movement in Israel, will include busloads of protesters from the Galilee as well.
Rumors regarding the Hurva’s reconstruction, together with a request to ascend to the Temple Mount that was filed last week by a Jewish group that seeks to build the third temple there, have given way to warnings from PA officials and Muslim clerics in east Jerusalem and the West Bank that such “Israeli attempts” were all but inevitable.
Plans by Jewish groups to commemorate “International Temple Mount Awareness Day” on Tuesday have added to the tensions, although police have made clear that the Temple Mount is closed to all visitors and that only Muslim men above the age of 50 and Muslim women were being allowed to enter the compound.
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The Awareness Day is being planned by a coalition of Jewish groups, including the Temple Institute, the Organization for the Renewal of the Temple, Women in Green, the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation and Israel National Radio (Arutz Sheva).
Organizers had hoped to ascend to the mount. They have also stressed, however, that the day’s main focus is to draw attention to the “total discrimination and a violation of human rights” against Jews who wish to go up to the Temple Mount or to pray there.
“The Temple Mount is the holiest place in the world; yet Jews and all non-Muslims are denied the right to pray in groups, and even as individuals,” the organizers said in a statement. “This refusal is accompanied by their constant humiliation, and they are granted no opportunity for any religious expression whatsoever on the Temple Mount,” the statement continued.
Jews “have no right to the Temple Mount,” Rahat Mayor Faiz Abu Sehaba, whose Negev city of some 45,000 inhabitants is the country’s largest Beduin community, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday, citing Jewish teachings that says that Jews cannot go onto the Temple Mount before the arrival of the messiah.
Abu Sehaba, a member of the Islamic Movement in Israel’s “more moderate” southern branch, said that while busloads leave Rahat for the Aksa compound every day, this week far more would make the journey, to bring the masses to protest what they see as threats to the foundation of the mosque from Israeli archeological digs nearby.
“We feel that there is a threat to the foundations of the Aksa Mosque,” Abu Sehaba said. “It would threaten the peace of the entire Middle East if, God forbid, something were to happen to the building.”
“We don’t want this, we want peace, not a new war in the Middle East,” he said.
“Religious Jews know about the ban on going to the Temple Mount,” the Rahat mayor said.
He blamed “settlers and right-wing Jews” for heading to the site for the sake of “provocation and politics.”
In the West Bank on Monday, former Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qurei warned that if construction were to continue in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, together with the continued demolition of Arab homes there, “another intifada will break out.”
Speaking to reporters in Abu Dis, Qurei added, “If the situation remains at this level, regardless of whether we take the decision or not, [a third intifada] is coming. If Israel continues these practices, it is coming.”
However, IDF intelligence assessments are that a third intifada is unlikely in the West Bank unless the PA instructs its security forces to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli targets.
The IDF is confident that it can “contain” demonstrations, like the recent ones in Hebron, while employing very little force, but would have more difficulty in a direct confrontation with the the thousands of armed PA security officers.
“The chances for a third intifada are low without an official PA decision to escalate the situation,” a senior officer said on Monday.
Regardless, Jerusalem police on Monday said their beefed-up deployment in east Jerusalem, including the Old City, would continue on Tuesday, and vowed that “any attempts to disturb the peace would be met with a firm hand.”
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Yes, those loveable little peace partners. Upholding Obama's honor in the face of the evil Zionists, I suppose.
Lets’ see now. In Iran, China, North Korea, Venezuala, Cuba, and too many other countries, protesters are met with REAL bullets, whips, clubs, torture, jailing and other “peaceful” methods of crowd control.
But the “brutal” authorities of Israel meet violent protesters with stun grenades and tear gas, meant to control but NOT injure. How dare those Jews be so cruel?
Deep sarcasm intended.
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