Israel said it will allow limited access to the Muslim shrines on a contested Jerusalem hilltop, after closing it for the first time since 2000 in a move likened by Palestinians to a declaration of war.
Police said in a text message late yesterday that the shrine, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, would be reopened to a limited number of Muslims for Friday prayers today. Only worshipers who are 50 or older will be admitted, the police said.
The earlier announcement of the site’s closure came as Israel tightened a security clampdown in Arab areas of Jerusalem, after the Oct. 29 shooting of a prominent Jewish religious activist, Yehuda Glick, who was seriously injured. A Palestinian suspected of carrying out the attack was killed in a gun-battle with police.
Glick, an American immigrant, heads a group demanding rights for Jewish prayer at the hilltop shrine. The compound has seen repeated clashes over the past few months between Palestinians and Israeli security officers.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said that “continued Israeli aggression and dangerous escalation is tantamount to a declaration of war on the Palestinian people and their holy sites.”
‘Spreading Lies’
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, in an e-mailed statement, accused Abbas of “spreading lies and hate against the right of Jews to their land and freedom of worship,” and called the shooting of Glick “another grave phase in the ongoing Palestinian incitement.”
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said that before yesterday, the site hadn’t been barred to Muslim worshipers since 2000. A visit by Ariel Sharon that year, before he was elected prime minister, set off a chain of violence that evolved into the second Palestinian uprising against Israel.
Muslims believe their Prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven from the site, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, which includes the silver-capped mosque and gold-capped Dome of the Rock, is Islam’s third-holiest site. Jews venerate the area as the site of their biblical temples. The Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, is located at the foot of the complex.
Since Israel captured east Jerusalem and its Old City in 1967, and annexed it in a move not internationally recognized, the compound has been run by a Muslim clerical trust known as the Waqf, under Israeli security control.
Tensions in Jerusalem have been mounting in recent months, spurred by the killing of Jewish and Arab teenagers, the 50-day conflict in Gaza, and most recently the killing by a Palestinian driver of two people waiting at a tram station.
‘Dangerous Stage’
“With the closing of Al-Aqsa, all the violence and the many arrests, we are entering a very dangerous stage in Jerusalem,” Hanna Issa, a professor of international law at Al-Quds University, said by phone. “The Palestinian position is weak because of internal divisions, and Arab countries are too busy with their own problems to stop it.”
The U.S., a close Israeli ally that has criticized the government’s latest plans for Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, appealed for calm.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, speaking to reporters in Washington before Israel announced the reopening of the religious complex, called for Muslim worshipers to be readmitted and said it’s “critical that all sides exercise restraint.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net; Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem at cbendavid@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net Amy Teibel, Ben Holland
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