Police forced their way into the Temple Mount firing stun grenades at Muslim rioters who hurled stones at policemen in protest at renovation work near the complex shortly after Friday prayers ended.
Five Arab youths have been arrested outside the Old City, police said, for hurling stones and inciting for violence. A total of 17 arrests have been made.
Over 3,000 policemen were deployed in Jerusalem as police raised the level of alert in the capital for fear of riots over digs near the Temple Mount.
A number of worshipers who barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa Mosque to avoid police arrest were convinced by a number of Arab MKs to vacate peacefully after police officer promised not to arrest them for throwing stones.
Police said all forces will leave the Temple Mount complex once the group evacuates the mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine.
The Waqf, the religious Muslim endowment that rules the Temple Mount, warned police against storming the mosque to nab the suspects.
Hadash MK Mohammad Barakeh demanded that Israel withdraw its "occupation forces" from the Temple Mount and "occupied Jerusalem," describing the police's confrontation with rioters as a deliberate act of aggression.
Jerusalem police quickly moved to stop the rioters, but predictably the media will blame Israelis for the latest rioting.
Just ignore all the threats by Palestinians, Iranians, and others who know damned well that the Israelis were doing nothing more than providing better access through the Mugrabi Gate. The area is unstable and threatens to collapse into the Kotel, where Jews pray since they're not allowed to do so on the Temple Mount itself.
The Waqf may claim that the Israelis were somehow trying to undermine the al Aqsa mosque, but that couldn't be more hopelessly wrong. The Islamic Waqf, which controls the religious sites on the Temple Mount have been doing a fine job of undermining the structural integrity of the Mount by their numerous excavations and expansions of the mosque that totally ignores thousands of years of Jewish connections to the Temple Mount.
The Temple Mount is Judaism's holiest spot on the planet. There is no other place that touches the hearts and minds of Jews like this one spot. Yet, Islamists repeatedly and repugnantly seek to whitewash the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount out of the history books. The media doesn't seem to have a problem with this since they often leave out this very fact.
The Waqf knows that this construction will not undermine the integrity of the Temple Mount, but can be used as yet another flashpoint to bring pressure to bear on Israel and potentially unite the Palestinians against Israel instead of continuing to fight among each other as we've seen for the past several months (the Hamas-Fatah internecine war).
UPDATE:
This link shows the Palestinian/Islamist disinformation campaign being waged against Israel and the work being done on the Mugrabi Gate access. (HT: BabbaZee).
UPDATE:
Just so we're clear with the area we're talking about:
That's a picture I took standing on the Mugrabi Gate access path. This path was heavily damaged by an earthquake and the Israeli excavations were designed to build a new access path to the Temple Mount, which happens to include the al Aqsa mosque.
This overhead photo of the Temple Mount makes clear where the Mugrabi Gate is located.
The Dome of the Rock is in the center, the al Aqsa mosque is on the right side of the image. The Kotel, the portion of the Western Wall which is the spot closest to where Jews are permitted to pray, is the lower center right of the image. Mugrabi Gate access is the curving structure immediately adjacent to the Kotel. This image also shows that the Mugrabi Gate access is outside the Temple Mount itself.
A close up of the Mugrabi Gate and Kotel (the excavations are ongoing in the area covered by the awnings):
UPDATE:
Here's a much better image of the collapsed section of the Mugrabi (Rambam) gate (taken Feb. 2004). The photos show not only the area in question outside the Temple Mount, but other photos show construction on the Temple Mount that may have been in violation of agreements with the Israeli Antiquities Authority. No one quite knows for sure what the Waqf has done on the Temple Mount since they've refused to let Israeli archeologists access the site (for fear of showing the world what was found gives lie to what the Islamists have been saying for years?).
UPDATE:
Apparently, today's day of rage was insufficient. The usual suspects are calling for more riots tomorrow.
Sheikh Ra’ad Salah, head of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, addressed a crowd of thousands in Nazareth Friday evening, saying, “Know that the Israeli establishment, which wants to conquer al-Aqsa, has already started to destroy part of the mosque.”The facts are that the Israelis were working to fix the access at Mugrabi Gate, but the Islamists will use any and every real or perceived slight as a focal point of instigating yet more violence.
Israel claimed the construction work at the Mugrabi Gate near the Muslim holy site was aimed at shoring up a rickety bridge.
Nothing has happened to the mosques, and no damage has been done to the mosques. This thug knows it, and doesn't care.
UPDATE:
Others following the breaking story and the media bias in coverage of the riots: Meryl Yourish (and here and here - just keep scrolling as the bias and exclusion of Judaism's connections to the Temple Mount are minimized and downplayed, if they're mentioned at all), YidWithLid, and Charles at LGF.
UPDATE:
Trackposted to Right Pundits, Perri Nelson's Website, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, basil's blog, Blue Star Chronicles, The Right Nation, Pirate's Cove, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao's Blog, and Jo's Cafe, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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