Jewish hardliners ejected from Jerusalem mosque compound

A group of hardline activists were removed from the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem on Wednesday after violating a ban on Jewish prayer there, police said.

The 10 Jews held their prayer-protest as Israelis commemorated Jerusalem Day, marking the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City following its capture in the Six-Day War of 1967.

The hilltop site in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem is known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif compound, which includes the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam, it is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was taken from Jordan in the 1967 war.

Jews are allowed to visit but not pray there to avoid provoking tensions, but Palestinians fear Israel will seek to assert further control over the site.

The site has been the scene of frequent incidents when Jews try to break the rule and police or Muslim guards intervene to stop them.

The 10, who appeared to be minors in video footage of the incident, were detained by police.

The Returning to the Mountain movement, to which the activists belong, put out a statement calling on the government to take full control of the mosque compound and assert Jewish prayer rights.

"Fifty years after freeing the Temple Mount, Israel police act like a Jordanian regime and arrest Jews for daring to bow at the most sacred spot to the Jewish people," the group said on its Facebook page.

"With Israel reacting to UNESCO time and again saying that the Temple Mount is ours, it's time that we enact full Jewish sovereignty on the mount!"

In a separate incident, a group of Jews on their way out of the compound began singing the Israeli national anthem. 

Police said officers began ushering them away when a number of guards for the Islamic endowments organisation, or Waqf, which administers the Al-Aqsa compound, attempted to attack the visitors and the officers.

Video footage of the incident shows police scuffling with guards. The visitors were eventually removed and three Waqf guards arrested.

Earlier this month, Israel rejected as "absurd" a UNESCO resolution it said denies Jews' historical connection to Jerusalem by presenting Israel as an occupying power there.

Israel claims Jerusalem as its united capital, while the Palestinians claim the city's eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

Source: AFP