Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank on Friday in protests over US President Donald Trump’s newly released peace plan, but Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the flashpoint Temple Mount passed peacefully.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that 48 Palestinians were wounded Friday during clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank, while an IDF soldier was lightly hurt by a rock thrown amid rioting near the Vered Yericho settlement.
Palestinians burned tires and threw rocks at troops who responded with tear gas and other riot control means.
Protests were also held in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
The plan released on Tuesday was angrily rejected by Palestinians as heavily biased toward Israel, with one of the key bones of contention being its classification of Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided capital.”
Palestinians have long seen the city’s eastern sector, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War, as the capital of their future state. Trump’s plan envisions a number of outlying East Jerusalem neighborhoods as the capital of a Palestinian state, but none of the holy sites or the Old City.
Fears of violence were raised Friday morning when a group of Palestinians protested at the Temple Mount after dawn prayers.
Israeli police “responded and dispersed the gathering,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, saying the protesters had chanted “nationalist” slogans.
But noon prayers, when more than 30,000 Palestinians attended services at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, passed off without incident, religious officials and AFP journalists said.
Rosenfeld said “heightened security” measures would be in place across the Old City of Jerusalem and “police units will respond if necessary.”
The site is the holiest in Judaism as the site of the biblical Temples, and the third holiest for Muslims, who refer to it as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound or the Noble Sanctuary.
Besides the increased police presence around the Temple Mount, the IDF this week deployed extra troops to the West Bank and along the Gaza border out of concerns of increased violence over the US peace plan.
In neighboring Jordan, thousands of people took to the streets after Friday prayers to protest the plan. Jordan, a close US ally and key player in previous peace efforts, has warned Israel against annexing territory in the West Bank under the plan. Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab countries to have signed peace agreements with Israel.
Chanting “Death to Israel”, about 3,000 people took part in the demonstration, which started in front of the city’s Al-Husseini Mosque, amid a heavy security presence, an AFP photographer said.
Protesters carried Jordanian and Palestinian flags and held up signs that read “Jordan rejects the deal of the century” and “Down with the deal of the century”.
Protesters chanted, “Listen, damn Trump, Palestine is not for sale” and “The Jordanian and Palestinian people are one, not two.”
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