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PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel yesterday of provoking a “religious war” as occupation forces shot dead a Palestinian near the West Bank city of Hebron.
Mr Abbas blamed the latest tensions on a series of provocative visits by Jewish extremists to Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site.
The extremists purport to be worshippers, but their aims are to ethnically cleanse east Jerusalem and build a third Jewish temple over the ruins of the al-Aqsa mosque.
The mosque stands alongside the Dome of the Rock in the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary).
President Abbas told thousands of supporters outside his headquarters in Ramallah that Israel was trying to divide the mosque compound.
He compared the Israeli ploy to the experience of a holy site in the West Bank that was split between Jewish and Muslim sides after Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers there 20 years ago.
“Leaders of Israel make a mistake if they think they can divide the al-Aqsa mosque as they have done in Ibrahimi mosque and they will retreat from this one too,” he said.
“By dividing the mosques, they are leading us to a religious war and no-one, Muslim or Christian, will accept that Jerusalem is theirs,” Mr Abbas added. “Jerusalem is our capital and there will be no concessions.”
Mr Abbas’s speech at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat coincided with Israeli troops shooting dead a Palestinian demonstrator during ongoing clashes on the occupied West Bank.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld reacted to the earlier fatal stabbing of two Israelis— one in Tel Aviv and the other near Hebron — by mobilising several police units in major Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, to be deployed “in public places.”
The Israeli military sent reinforcements to the West Bank, following what it called “new security assessments.”
Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said: “I think these reinforcements will calm the situation down.”
The troops’ use of live rounds against stone-throwing demonstrators, resulting in the killing of an al-Aroub refugee camp resident, illustrated something very different.
