Palestinians Call Off Prayer Ban at Jerusalem Muslim Shrine

(Bloomberg) -- Palestinian government and religious leaders called off their ban on prayers at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound after Israel removed crowd surveillance equipment it installed there, dialing back a violent confrontation over a site also revered by Jews.

Thousands of jubilant Palestinians poured through the gates to the shrine in Jerusalem’s Old City for the first Muslim services there in two weeks, proclaiming victory in the standoff with Israel in loud chants. The atmosphere remained fraught, however, as some of them clashed with Israeli security forces, and the Jerusalem police chief warned that further violence may follow.

Palestinians portrayed the Israeli about-face as bolstering their claims of sovereignty over the complex, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war.

“What’s important to us is to support our people and their steadfastness on Jerusalem,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said earlier in the day in a televised address urging Palestinians to return to the mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine. A senior aide, Nabil Shaath, said Israel’s capitulation “has proved that we are capable of confronting Israel. It is the first round of victory with more rounds to come.”

Outbursts of unrest linked to the shrine typically assume crisis proportions, magnified by the competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to the site. Muslim faithful revere it as the place the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, calling it Haram Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary. Jews, who call it the Temple Mount, venerate the hilltop as the location of their biblical temple, Judaism’s holiest site.

The confrontations with Israeli police Thursday left at least 118 Palestinians injured, most from tear-gas inhalation and some hit by rubber-coated bullets, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society emergency services. Israeli police said the Palestinians hurled stones and raised banned Palestinian flags at the site. A 26-year-old Palestinian man died in a Jerusalem hospital from a head injury he suffered in clashes elsewhere in the city three days ago, the Red Crescent said.

Citing the continued unrest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered that the police presence be bolstered throughout areas of the Old City and east Jerusalem surrounding the al-Aqsa compound.

Sovereignty Claims

Worshipers had prayed in the streets outside the shrine rather than submit to the metal detectors, security cameras and crowd control barriers placed after Israeli Arab gunmen killed two Israeli policemen at the site two weeks ago. While political tensions were eased by the decision to remove them, it’s not yet clear whether the violence they provoked will also subside.

Jerusalem Police Chief Yoram Halevi told reporters that “there will be casualties” if Palestinians don’t conduct themselves peacefully at prayers on Friday, the Muslim holy day. “Don’t test us, because we know how to respond, and we know how to respond directly and forcefully,” he said.

Although Israel insisted the cameras and metal detectors were a security precaution, the Palestinians saw them as a sign it was tightening its grip over the holy site, and by extension, the Israeli-occupied eastern sector of the city that they claim for a future capital. Muslim countries and organizations supported their campaign to revoke the new security arrangements.

In the week following placement of the cameras, four Palestinians were killed at clashes with Israeli security forces and three members of an Israeli family were stabbed to death by a Palestinian who broke into a West Bank settlement home. Palestinian leaders had called for a “day of rage” in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israeli Arab communities on Friday.

Risks Weighed

The Israeli government’s decision to reverse the security measures was an acknowledgment that the unrest they provoked was more dangerous than the domestic fallout from backtracking.

Although a recent poll showed that three-quarters of Israelis surveyed thought the Israeli leader capitulated to Palestinian pressure in taking down the most visible of the new security devices -- metal detectors -- an obviously bigger concern was the threat that the violence would spiral. Netanyahu’s office had no comment on the government’s decision.

Political opponents castigated Netanyahu for caving in to international pressure.

“Israel comes out weaker from this crisis,” Naftali Bennett, the education minister who heads the right-wing Jewish Home party, told Israel Radio. “Instead of strengthening our sovereignty in Jerusalem, we sent a message that you can weaken our sovereignty.”

Abbas noted in his statement that he hadn’t decided whether to reestablish the security coordination with Israel that was broken off to protest installation of the metal detectors.

Jordan Attack

Clashes over sovereignty at the mount inevitably draw in Jordan, one of two Arab states to have made peace with Israel. Under a complicated control structure reached after the 1967 war, Israel is in charge of the hilltop’s security, but Jordan, through an Islamic trust or Waqf, is the religious custodian.

Efforts to defuse the latest round of violence there were complicated this week when an Israeli security guard at the Israeli embassy in Amman killed a workman who attacked him, as well as a bystander. Jordan initially insisted on interrogating the guard before allowing him to leave the country, but relented after Israel agreed to take down the shrine detectors.

On Thursday, frictions over the episode flared again when Jordan’s King Abdullah, who was out of the country when the shooting happened, condemned Netanyahu’s conduct in the case and said the way it is handled will have a “direct impact” on ties. He demanded that the guard stand trial in the deaths of the two Jordanians, and accused Netanyahu -- who had embraced the security officer on his arrival in Israel and presented his return as a diplomatic victory -- of trying to reap “political and personal” gain from the shooting.

“This kind of behavior is intolerable and provocative as it makes all of us angry, it destabilizes security and it feeds extremism in the region,” the king said in a statement posted by the official Jordanian news agency Petra.

--With assistance from Amy Teibel

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net, Fadwa Hodali in Ramallah at fhodali@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Larry Liebert