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by Tanya Willmer JERUSALEM (AFP) - Violent clashes flared between Israeli police and Palestinian protestors Thursday, leaving at least 29 people hurt, after a controversial visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to a Jerusalem site sacred to both Jews and Muslims. At least four Palestinians were hurt, two of them shot by rubber bullets, when Israeli forces fired on crowds of stone-throwing demonstrators in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam. Twenty-five police were also slightly hurt in the clashes, which erupted shortly after Sharon left the complex, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in the glare of the world's media. Palestinians denounced the visit as a dangerous provocation and complained at the massive security laid on for Sharon, leader of the right-wing Likud bloc, Israel's second largest political party. "It was a dangerous step which caused harm to the Islamic holy places," Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told AFP in Gaza. "The Arab and Islamic world must mobilize against such actions." Sharon's visit came at a delicate stage in peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians as they try to break the impasse over the fate of Jerusalem and the holy sites inside the walled Old City. It also coincided with release of the details of an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to be published on Friday in which he acknowledges publicly for the first time that Jerusalem and al-Quds, the Arabic name for the Holy City, will be twin capitals of Israel and a future Palestinian state.
The complex is located in east Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed as part of its "undivided and eternal capital." Although Israel claims sovereignty over the area, which is built atop the site of the former Jewish temples, day-to-day control of the site is under the Islamic Waqf, or religious trust. The timing of the visit also raised speculation Sharon was seeking the media spotlight ahead of a possible Likud leadership challenge from former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the announcement that he would not be facing trial over allegations of fraud and graft. Around 700 Palestinians were inside the mosque compound, along with several Arab members of the Israeli parliament, as Sharon led a delegation of Likud MPs to the site after the sun rose over the Old City. Witnesses said an estimated Israeli security force of up to 1,000 accompanied him. "I came here with a message of peace, "Sharon told reporters after leaving the compound and paying a visit to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism that abuts the mosque compound. "I am very sorry that people were injured. But I am concerned about the incitement among the Palestinians, by their leaders," he said, accusing the Arab Israeli MPs in the compound of stoking the violence. He brushed aside the criticism of his actions, saying: "The Temple Mount is the holiest place of the Jewish people, and I don't see any reason whatsoever to prevent anyone visiting the holiest of the holiest places." But Faisal Husseini, the top PLO official for Jerusalem, said it was an "irresponsible act" designed to serve Sharon's own political interests. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"It will be Jerusalem and Al-Quds, one next to the other, as two capitals," Barak told the Jerusalem Post newspaper, while again rejecting a transfer of sovereignty over Temple Mount to the Palestinians or to an Islamic body.
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