West Bank clashes escalate over al-Aqsa mosque

Over the past several days, there have been frequent confrontations between Israeli security forces and Palestinian worshippers, who go to the site.

Police said 24 Jews and 450 tourists visited the site Monday morning.

Omar Kiswani, who directs the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Mount, told the Guardian that Israel should not have the authority to restrict Muslims from entering the site.

Spokeswoman Luba Samri said the suspects were connected to Monday’s riots in which Palestinians barricaded themselves inside a mosque at the site and then threw firebombs and rocks at officers outside during a major Jewish holiday.

A few 200 Palestinians protested the move at the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem’s Old City and near the site where Levlovich was killed. He asked for, and later received, General Assembly recognition of the Palestinian territory as a nonmember observer state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967.

A campaign by a hardline Jewish minority to build a new temple at the site has further stoked suspicions among Palestinians. Many Palestinians no longer believe a two-state solution is realistic and support political violence. It has been hit by repeated clashes in recent weeks as Jews celebrated a series of religious holidays. Israel says there are no plans to change the arrangements.

The embattled Abbas, elected 10 years ago to a four-year term, declared that al Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are “ours”, adding that the Jews “have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet“.

The army said the woman was transferred to a hospital in Israel after the incident. “I will demand an end to this wild incitement”, Netanyahu said before leaving for the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The military said “rioters threw rocks at passing vehicles and at forces that arrived at the scene”. At the same time, Palestinians are still scarred from the harsh Israeli clampdown following the bombings and shootings of the last revolt, and there might be little appetite for renewed hardship.

“We’re going to defend our mosque”, said a 21-year-old man in a tracksuit and mask with only his eyes visible as he piled stones inside the mosque with other youths after Sunday’s clashes.

A few Palestinians, however, accuse Israeli authorities of planning to institute a partition scheme under which Jewish worshippers would allowed to access parts of the compound – which Jews refer to as the “Temple Mount” – for certain hours of the day.

Iran’s “enormous onslaught” in the Middle East, which will be the main focus of his speech, is not just an Israeli concern but worries other countries in the region, which serves “as a basis for cooperation”, the prime minister said.

Israeli forces said they had arrested Majdi Galal Ezzkat Kowarik and Ahmed Azam Ata Abdat from Palestinian village of Awarta, near Nablus, in a joint operation.