Sunday’s clashes at Jerusalem’s Haram Al Sharif between Palestinians and armed Israeli police and soldiers have been either misrepresented or underestimated by the world media. But not by the Palestinian Authority.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad summoned all the foreign representatives to a crisis meeting in Ramallah where he warned of the dangers posed by such events. The Israelis arrested at least 50 Palestinians they said had taken part in the violence that spilled out of the compound into the narrow streets of the Old City.
Israel is also taking the incidents seriously - but as usual, the wrong people are being arrested. I went into the Old City on Sunday, about an hour and-a-half after a group of Israeli activists - not tourists as was reported by some agencies and newspapers - entered the mosque compound through the Maghrebi (Western) Gate. The Israelis made this incursion between Muslim prayer times when foreign tourists are permitted to visit the compound.
By the time I arrived at a corner near Lion’s Gate in the city wall, Israeli soldiers and police had extracted the activists from the compound and groups of Palestinian men, women and children had gathered in the streets leading to the compound, awaiting developments. Shops were shuttered while some people huddled behind half-open doors. Two young boys were shooed away by their father from a possible confrontation along Mujaheddin Street which ends at Lion’s Gate.
The man standing beside me, named Jaber, explained what had happened.
“The trouble began at half past seven when Israeli soldiers allowed settlers to enter the compound and closed all the gates. Muslims were not allowed in. Muslims inside and outside threw stones at the Israelis. The soldiers fired back with rubber bullets and gas.”
As he spoke, a platoon of Israeli troops marched through the gathering and made their way to the compound. They were followed by more men in T-shirts and jeans. One was carrying a stick and had the handle of a pistol peaking from beneath his shirt.
“You see, they are pretending to be Arabs to arrest the lads,” observed Jaber.
“Palestinians don’t have guns.”
An ambulance pulled out of a side road and departed through the arched city gate. The crowd drifted towards the compound, braving the heavy deployment of Israeli police in blue, border police in grey, soldiers in olive drab, and intelligence agents in civilian clothes. I managed to slip into the plaza next to the gate to the compound just as a cheerful batch of nine or ten-year-old schoolboys in bright blue emerged from the compound chanting: “We will defend you with our blood, O, Aqsa.”
They had clearly been inside during the disturbance, but their teacher hurried them away before they could be interviewed.
Amin Abu Ghazzali, head of Palestinian medical services in Jerusalem, told this reporter that his ambulances evacuated three seriously wounded Palestinians. Medics were not allowed to do this for long after the clashes inside had ended. A posse of Israeli border police dragged a Palestinian into the plaza, slammed him up against a stone wall and pushed him to the pavement. An old woman carrying a bottle of water and a medic in an orange vest shoved through the cordon of legs around the fallen man to provide him with aid.
Abu Ghazzali snapped: “This is Israel exactly… they bring him here to beat him in front of people to let everyone be afraid of them. If he has done something wrong, they must take him to court.”
The man’s hands were bound with a plastic band and he was pulled away in front of newly arrived television cameras. By half past eleven, the Old City was quiet, but its Palestinian inhabitants were tense.
Palestinians everywhere were angry. On Monday, after seeing the reportage on the incident, I went to the Islamic Waqf Council to call on its head, Sheikh Abed el-Azim Salhab, who had been outside the compound from seven in the morning and was prevented, along with Waqf employees, from entering the Haram until half past ten. He told me that the group of “settlers” involved had “come in 1980 over the eastern wall armed with bombs. The [Waqf] guards arrested them and handed them to the Israeli authorities.... It’s always the same people from Kiryat Arba [settlement near Hebron] who are trying to make trouble for us.... The Israeli government wants to put its hand on Al Aqsa Mosque and put it under Israeli law but we reject this possibility. They want to make it like the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. This will never happen.”
He continued: “Our real problem is with the Americans, not with the Israeli government. The American government - not the people - encourages the Israelis to do what they want.”
Asked if he saw any change in the Obama administration’s attitude, he replied: “Till this moment we are hearing [positive] words from Obama but nothing [positive] has happened.”
Mahdi Abel Hadi, head of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, was also at the Haram on Sunday. He pointed out that such episodes contribute to pressure on Palestinians and on Jordan as custodian of the Haram Al Sharif and other Muslim holy places in occupied Palestine to accept Israeli demands.
“After 40 years of occupying the site, they want to divide and share like Hebron.”
By making repeated incursions, the Israelis seek “to establish their right to be there... and get people used to living with this reality”.
Exactly. This is why something must be done to stop the settler activists. It is important to note that the initial attempt to enter the Haram on September 24 coincided with a scuffle between Israeli activists and Palestinians at the divided Hebron mosque, a constant source of friction. It is also significant that Sunday’s events took place ahead of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. In Jerusalem, this has become a 30-hour period when Jewish zealots, seized with rage, stone vehicles moving around their neighbourhoods and drive secular Jews and Palestinians into seclusion in their homes.
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