Israeli forces seal off West Bank sparking protests

By Alastair Macdonald, Jerusalem

Saturday, March 13, 2010

ISRAELI forces sealed off the West Bank and massed riot squads around Jerusalem’s Old City and Arab neighbourhoods during Muslim weekly prayers yesterday, facing down Palestinian anger over Jewish settlement expansion.

After a week in which visiting US Vice President Joe Biden condemned Israel for approving new building just as Washington was pushing its key Middle East ally to relaunch peace talks with the Palestinians, police said a plan to avert a repeat of clashes in which dozens were wounded last Friday had worked.

Israel barred Palestinians from crossing from the West Bank into Israel and Jerusalem, and barred men under 50 from al-Aqsa mosque, the flashpoint holy site in the walled Old City.

As hundreds of youths streamed away from noon prayers at a mosque in the district of Ras al-Amud, witnesses saw men hurl stones at a car carrying Orthodox Jewish children. One rock smashed a side window, but there were no obvious injuries.

Islamists in the blockaded Gaza Strip rallied supporters to protest at Israel’s policies in Jerusalem: "We will redeem al-Aqsa mosque with our souls and our blood," the crowd chanted.

As demonstrators burned US and Israeli flags, Khalil al-Hayya, a leader of the Hamas movement which rules Gaza, urged Hamas’s rival, West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to reverse his decision to engage in "proximity talks" with Israel through US mediators after a hiatus of 15 months.

Before he left Israel on Thursday, Biden made clear he did not want Abbas to hold back from talks. These have been cast in doubt by calls from Palestinian officials and the Arab League for Israel to reverse its latest settlement expansion — at Ramat Shlomo in the Jerusalem area — before talks start.

The Israeli government agreed a measure to try to avoid a repeat of this week’s diplomatic debacle, when a low-level ministry committee approved plans to build 1,600 new homes, embarrassing Biden and sparking outrage among Arab leaders who had just endorsed a resumption of US-mediated negotiations.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the coalition cabinet would discuss at its weekly meeting tomorrow a measure that would ensure the premier’s team was aware of any sensitive planning decisions before they became public.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, March 13, 2010