Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police in east Jerusalem

26 August 2010

Muslim protestors set ablaze half a dozen vehicles in the eastern part of Jerusalem on Thursday and threw stones and firebombs at Israeli police after Jewish settlers approached a mosque, local residents and police said. There were no reported injuries in the incident in the Silwan neighborhood, where tensions have flared between Palestinians and a small group of settlers who have moved there in the past two decades.

Local residents said settlers tried to reach a spring, which religious Jews view as a biblical site, by crossing through a mosque courtyard. Israeli police said Palestinians then took to the streets in violent demonstrations, throwing rocks and firebombs at police and vehicles, burning six cars.

"At three a.m., four settlers arrived and asked to open the gate so they could take a shortcut to a spring," Mahmoud Karin, a resident of the neighborhood, told the ‘Haaretz’ newspaper. "One of the [Muslim] worshippers saw them and yelled to them to find out what they were doing and they fled," he was quoted as saying. The settlers involved in the incident denied the Palestinian allegations, saying that "the story with the gate is completely unfamiliar to us."