"Police said the violence began after Palestinians threw stones at officers on patrol in the area." "Israeli police, Arabs clash near Jerusalem mosque," by Allyn Fisher-Ilan for Reuters, October 25 (thanks to all who sent this in):
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police stormed Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque compound on Sunday, hurling stun grenades at Palestinians who threw rocks at them in another outbreak of violence at the holy city's most sensitive site.A medic for the Palestinian Red Crescent said 18 Palestinians were injured. Police reported that three officers were hurt.
The unrest, following a similar incident a month ago, did not appear to herald any immediate slide into widescale violence that could disrupt U.S.-led efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, suspended since December.
But the confrontation between Israeli police in riot gear and rock-throwing Muslims alarmed by rumours that right-wing Jews planned to enter the site was a reminder that Jerusalem remains a cauldron of heated religious and political passions.
No kidding, really?
Police, who also used tear gas in the clashes, did not go into al-Aqsa mosque, situated on al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), regarded by Muslims as the third holiest site after the cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.The compound is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, where the two destroyed Biblical Temples once stood. Israel captured the site in a 1967 war, along with the rest of East Jerusalem, which it annexed, and adjoining parts of the West Bank.
Police said the violence began after Palestinians threw stones at officers on patrol in the area. Police then rushed onto the compound behind riot shields, using stun grenades and batons to repel protesters, who retreated into the mosque.
During the clash, dozens of young Arab men threw rocks, lumps of masonry and water tanks from the roofs of houses at police in the narrow alleyways around the mosque compound, which overlooks Judaism's Western Wall....
Second verse, same as the first.
With Israel unwilling to assert its victory over the West Bank and Gaza, this slow-motion war will never end, or at least not until Israel ends. These losers of every war of aggression that they have launched against Israel should be resettled to the Islamic holyland - literally to Mecca, and the West Bank and Gaza depopulated and maintained by Israel as World Heritage wildlife reserves.
'Police then rushed onto the compound behind riot shields, using stun grenades and batons to repel protesters, who retreated into the mosque'
probably the same place the Muslims started their assault from...
Rock throwing by Muslims at Jews is an old behavior, deeply ingrained, going back hundreds of years throughout dar al-Islam, where Shari'a rendered Jewish dhimmis helpless and defenseless against gratuitous Muslim agression - in Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria, Iran and elsewhere, Jews were habitually targeted by rock-throwing Muslim children, and were powerless to retaliate in any way. Ample documentation exists (see, for example - Bernard Lewis's Jews of Islam, where I recall reading a European or American's late nineteenth or early twentieth century eyewitness account describing how Turkish urchins took sport in hitting Jewish women in the head and face with stones; the unfortunate dhimmi women, who could do nothing to defend themselves, merely attempted to ignore the assault). Being targets of Muslim rock throwers was a given for the hapless Jews throughout Islamdom, and their helplessness derived, ultimately, from the terms of the Pact of 'Umar, which served as the basis for the strictures and humiliations that dhimmi populations trapped in dar al-Islam would have to endure for centuries. While the Pact of 'Umar victimized the Syrian Christians, its terms, incorporated into Shari'a, were ultimately applied to all of the so-called People of the Book.
Imagine if police cordoned off the mosque. The Arabs could decide whether they wanted to throw stones or fire at the police and risk damage to their "third holiest site", a site Mohammed never laid eyes on, except in his sleep.
Easy solution - bulldoze al-Aqsa. Seriously, why isn't it simply dismantled from where it perches atop the Temple of Solomon and rebuilt at a different location (say about 100 miles to the East)?
"Israelis respond."
Love it!