Israel Police Storm Al Aqsa Compound

[Muslimah]

http://news.ibn.net/newsgen.asp?url=stormal

2/27/04

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli police on Friday stormed one of Jerusalem's holiest sites to disperse hundreds of Palestinian stone-throwers protesting Israel's contentious West Bank barrier.

Palestinian worshippers at the Old City compound that is the site of Jewish biblical temples and home to two mosques began throwing stones at police officers at the end of Friday prayers, Israeli police spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby said.

Violence surrounding the barrier reached a peak Thursday when Israeli security forces killed two Palestinians protesting the structure. Israeli troops fired live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters at the stone-throwing demonstrators.

Palestinians have been holding mass demonstrations against the barrier since Monday when the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands, began hearings on the legality of the structure. The hearings ended Wednesday and the court is expected to hand down a nonbinding opinion in the coming months.

Palestinian stone-throwers on the Temple Mount compound - Judaism's holiest site and Islam's third holiest - threw rocks at Jewish worshippers praying at the Western Wall below. Worshippers were briefly evacuated, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the chief Jewish official at the site, said.

Israel says the barrier - that could stretch 450 miles when completed - is needed to keep suicide bombers and other Palestinian attackers out of its towns and cities.

Palestinians say the structure, about one-fourth of which has been built, is a land grab meant to prevent them from establishing an independent state.

In some areas, the barrier of concrete walls, razor wire and trenches isolates Palestinian towns and villages and separates farmers from their fields.

Some Palestinian students have had to stand for hours waiting for soldiers to open gates so they can reach their schools. Israel has removed - and announced other plans to move - sections of the barrier in recent days in an attempt to ease conditions for the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the Fatah Revolutionary Council met Friday for its third day of meetings in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

During a heated discussion on security reforms late Thursday, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat got into a heated, violent argument with longtime Fatah official Nasser Yousef, a member of the council who attended the meeting said on condition of anonymity.

Arafat was angered when Yousef questioned the unification and efficiency of Palestinian security forces, the official said.

"You traitor, spy, shut your mouth, you have no right to talk," Arafat was quoted as shouting to Yousef before hurling a microphone at him.

Yousef chucked a pen at the veteran Palestinian leader before other members of the Revolutionary Council intervened and calmed down the two septuagenarians, the official said.

The 126-member Revolutionary Council, Fatah's second-highest body, began its three-day conference Wednesday. This is the first meeting of the council, which is supposed to meet every three months, since violence erupted in September 2000.

Arafat and Yousef have clashed several times in the past, most recently when the Palestinian leader prevented Yousef from serving as security chief in Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia's government.

Yousef - along with other members of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority - has long called for reforms in the security forces.

Arafat has been stalling and opposing reforms, including a recent demand by the European Union that some 25,000 security officers be paid directly to their bank accounts. Currently, cash is given to officers who then distribute the money among their employees.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians fired a homemade Qassam rocket at a house in the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, a settler spokesman said. The house was heavily damaged, but residents were not injured, he added.