Mideast unrest grinds on, but prayers pass quietly

JERUSALEM - Muslim prayers on the first Friday of Ramadan ended with isolated rock throwing in Jerusalem but the death of two Palestinians in fresh clashes kept nerves on edge in the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a 27-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank and a 12-year-old Palestinian in Gaza, hospital officials said, raising to at least 289 the number of people, mostly Palestinians, killed in the nine-week-old uprising.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said there were no clashes near the Gaza-Egypt border where Palestinian hospital officials said the 12-year-old boy was killed.

In Cairo, Arab League sources said a group of Arab foreign ministers will meet in Damascus on December 11 to review the worst Israeli-Palestinian violence in years.

The ministers will follow up on an emergency Arab summit in October that strongly criticised Israel for excessive use of force but did not demand Arab states sever all diplomatic ties with Israel, leaving the door open to peace efforts.

In Jerusalem, tens of thousands of people prayed mostly without incident at the al-Aqsa mosque which is a focus for the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation.

The number of worshippers, which had sunk to a few thousand in recent weeks, was boosted by Israel's decision to allow young Palestinian men to pray at Islam's third holiest site on the first of four Friday prayers over the Muslim holy month.

"Everyone was very angry and very sad because of the killings," said Ashraf, a Palestinian worshipper.

The uprising erupted following a controversial visit to the shrine, which is also Judaism's holiest site, by leading Israeli hawk Ariel Sharon on September 28.

During normal years, as many as 200,000 Muslims worship at the al-Aqsa shrine on the four Fridays of Ramadan.

But an Israeli ban prevented Palestinian Muslims living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from entering Jerusalem to pray at al-Aqsa, which has become a rallying-cry for the uprising.

Clashes across the West Bank and Gaza countered a perception that the nine-week-old uprising was slowing, which had led Israeli officials to say they believed the Palestinian Authority was trying to halt the violence.

In the divided West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinians shopping for food at a market ducked as bullets whizzed by. One Palestinian was wounded.

The Israeli army said a three-month-old baby was hurt when Palestinian stone-throwers near the West Bank town of Bethlehem hit the car she was in. Two soldiers were wounded in other stone-throwing clashes, the army said.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli troops fired an anti-tank missile in a gunfight with Palestinians at a junction near the Palestinian-ruled town of Ramallah and a Jewish settlement.

Palestinian gunmen shot at an Israeli bus on the outskirts of Jerusalem and an Israeli jeep patrolling the Israeli-Gaza border came under fire. No one was hurt.

About 2,000 people shouting "Revenge, revenge" marched at a funeral in Gaza of a man who died on Thursday of wounds sustained earlier in the unrest, police said.

Israel said the ban on worshippers from the West Bank and Gaza going to al-Aqsa was to prevent violence at the flashpoint site and indicated that if the prayers passed quietly, it would consider allowing in Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

"We are very happy that everything was quiet and we are looking forward to the next Friday because it's only the beginning of Ramadan," Israeli police chief Yehuda Wilk said.

About 100 youths on the mosque compound threw rocks at police but many of the congregation persuaded them to stop so Israel would have no reason to ban worshippers next Friday.

Officials from the Muslim Waqf religious trust said they counted about 25,000 worshippers at the site, which contains two mosques on a giant platform. Wilk said that based on police counts around 105,000 worshippers prayed at al-Aqsa.

Launching a re-election bid on Thursday, Prime Minister Ehud Barak indicated the time may be ripe to renew deadlocked peacemaking with the Palestinians.

Barak put forward a partial peace plan granting Palestinians a state and delaying a decision on Jerusalem. But Palestinians rejected the proposals, accusing him of electioneering.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said any accord had to cover all issues, including the status of Jerusalem, which both sides want as their capital.

Israeli cabinet minister and former Israeli leader, Shimon Peres said any serious proposals about restarting deadlocked peace talks should be made privately to the Palestinians.

Newspaper polls on Friday showed Peres, a Nobel laureate, would have a better chance of winning an election than Barak. But Peres said he had no plans to challenge Barak for the Labour party leadership.

- REUTERS

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