A car exploded in occupied Jerusalem Sunday afternoon, as dozens of Palestinians and 15 Israeli policemen were injured in clashes triggered by an extremist Jewish group's ceremony to lay a cornerstone of the so-called Third Temple.
The blast took place in a car parked in a lot on Moshe Dayan Street in the city's Pisgat Ze'ev section, said the Jerusalem Post.
Initial reports indicate that one person suffered from shock as a result of the explosion.
The area fire brigade commander has reported that additional bombs were found in the vehicle, according to the paper.
Earlier, Israeli forces stormed the Al Aqsa mosque compound for a second time Sunday, arresting Palestinian protestors who were in there in defiance of an extremist Jewish group's attempt to "defile" the third holiest Islamic site.
Foreign journalists were attacked by the Israeli security forces on the scene, reported Al Jazeera satellite channel, whose cameraman was arrested and later released.
The first attempt to break through the Palestinian crowd in the mosque failed after the demonstrators fought back fiercely, hurling stones and sandals at the Israelis.
More violence is expected later Sunday as Orthodox Jews will have a celebration at the so-called Wailing Wall, according to reports.
Thirty Palestinians and 15 Israelis were injured in the violent clashes that erupted earlier when Israeli troops fired rubber-coated bullets and detonated tear gas and stun grenades.
Israel Army Radio said that the Palestinian protestors hurled stones at Jewish worshippers at the Wailing Wall after a fundamentalist Jewish group carried out a symbolic laying of the cornerstone for the Third Temple near the Magharba gate in the Old City.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's top aide Nabil Abu Rudeina said the Israeli government bore full responsibility for the "provocation of radical Jews."
"They are playing with fire and will only plunge the region into a religious war. It is a pure provocation and a blatant challenge to Arabs, the Muslim world and the international community," he told AFP.
Jerusalem police chief Mikki Levy said 400 police were sent to the area, home to the third holiest place in Islam, adding that six police were injured when they were hit by stones thrown by Palestinians against police and at Jews worshipping at the Wailing Wall.
"We decided to evacuate the thousands of Jews praying at the Wailing Wall and to enter the Temple Mount, firing stun grenades to disperse the Palestinian demonstrators," he told AFP.
"Calm has now been restored," he claimed.
Witnesses reported hearing shots at the site, but Levy denied there was any shooting, AFP said.
Police were out in force in Jerusalem fearing an explosion of violence after an extremist Israeli group tried to enter the Temple Mount and earlier laid a symbolic cornerstone for a new Jewish temple outside the Old City.
The action triggered a storm of protest from Palestinians and the Arab World.
The Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement won approval from Israel's Supreme Court Wednesday to lay the symbolic cornerstone at one of the gates of the Old City, near the ruins of what the Jews call the Second Temple.
But the court denied the group permission to lay the stone at the site itself, which is also home to the third holiest place in Islam.
"In not permitting us to enter the Temple Mount, the authorities prolong the tragedy of the Jewish people," the group's leader Gershom Salomon said after the court ruling Wednesday, cited by the Israeli press.
According to the Jerusalem Post, police in Jerusalem braced for unrest in the area, adding that dozens of supporters of the outlawed Kach terrorist movement attempted to break through police barriers overnight and enter the holy mosque.
The Palestinian Authority warned of the repercussions of Wednesday's court decision giving the symbolic stone-laying the go-ahead, calling on Palestinians to demonstrate in large numbers to "defend the mosque compound."
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met Saturday with representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to discuss the controversial plans to build a third Jewish temple in occupied east Jerusalem, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry source told AFP.
Maher made no comment afterwards, having earlier said that the laying of the first stone is "a provocation which adds to numerous earlier Israeli provocations contrary to international legality."
None of the five diplomats mentioned any specific measures to stop the temple being built.
Arab and Palestinian leaders have warned that the ceremony by Israeli ultra-nationalists could set off a long-feared war in a region wracked by non-stop bloodshed since September.
"Israel has not learned from its own dangerous mistakes," Hanan Ashrawi, the former Palestinian cabinet member and new spokeswoman for the Arab League, told a Jerusalem press conference on Saturday.
"Israel is deliberately throwing the whole region into conflict and we advise them not to take such a dangerous step, because Israel itself might not be able to control the consequences," she said.
The Islamic Hamas movement called on Palestinians to mobilize Sunday and be ready to die to stop the laying of the symbolic stone.
"We call on the Palestinian people and their political groupings to gather very early tomorrow (Sunday) at the Al Aqsa mosque compound to stop the laying of the first stone of the said temple," Hamas said in a statement sent to AFP in Beirut.
With nerves frayed and tempers at fever pitch as 10 months of the Intifada have claimed more than 660 lives, nearly all of them Palestinian, other Arab officials around the region have classed the ceremony as another dangerous step toward all-out war.
The Intifada began after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon paid a provocative visit to the compound which many analysts saw as a bid by the former general to oust then prime minister Ehud Barak, whose peace talks with the Palestinians had fallen apart.
Sharon went on to crush Barak in February elections in the midst of the uprising, with a pledge to take a hardline approach in dealing with the Palestinians.
The unrest on the ground continued Saturday with a Palestinian police officer seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire in the southern West Bank town of Hebron, reported the Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
An Israeli unit which was fired upon from Bani Naim returned fire, an Israeli army spokesman said, although it did not suffer any casualties.
Earlier, the Israeli army bombarded what it called a Palestinian weapons factory in the Gaza Strip early Saturday after a nearby Jewish settlement came under mortar fire.
An Israeli army statement said helicopter gunships hit a building where the Palestinians were manufacturing mortar shells.
But the Palestinians denied it was a bomb factory, saying it is used to process iron, according to Al Jazeera satellite TV channel.
The Israeli army also strengthened its blockade of the Palestinian towns of Nablus and Hebron, in the northern and southern West Bank, Palestine's public television reported.
The measures were taken following reports that attacks against Israel were being planned from the two autonomous Palestinian towns, the television reported without giving further details.
An Israeli army spokesman questioned by AFP said that access to and from the two towns was only being authorized for humanitarian reasons.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is "arguably the most important intellectual alive," has been quoted as saying: "State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it." - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
