Agence France Presse JERUSALEM: Israeli police said they have lifted age restrictions for the main weekly prayers at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound Friday, for the first time in weeks.
The restrictions on male worshipers have been imposed Fridays since mid-September when repeated clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police erupted at the flash-point site.
"For the moment, no age limitations on worshipers' entry," a police spokeswoman said in a statement.
The restrictions had meant only men over the age of 40, 45, or 50, depending on the decision taken, were allowed to enter the mosque compound in east Jerusalem that is Islam's third-holiest site.
The compound was seized by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, and later annexed in a move never internationally recognized, and is currently managed by an Islamic foundation under the auspices of Jordan.
However Israel controls access.
The compound is also the holiest site for Jews who call it the Temple Mount.
But under longstanding rules governing the site, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray.
Clashes erupted during a series of Jewish religious holidays in September as an increase in visits by Jews raised fears among Muslims that Israel was planning to change the rules.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly that there are no such plans, something he reiterated after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Berlin Thursday.
The talks were part of a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at defusing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians which have led to a flare-up of deadly violence this month.
The protests at Al-Aqsa triggered a wave of lone-wolf knife attacks, shootings and car-rammings against Israeli soldiers, police or civilians.
Since Oct. 1, at least 49 Palestinians and one Israeli Arab have been killed, including alleged attackers. Eight Israelis have been killed in attacks.
One Israeli Jew and one Eritrean have also been killed after being mistaken for attackers.
Israeli wounded in West Bank stabbing, attacker shot
JERUSALEM: A Palestinian stabbed and lightly wounded a soldier in the occupied West Bank Friday before Israeli forces shot and wounded the assailant, the army said.
"An assailant stabbed an IDF soldier during operational activity adjacent to the security fence in Gush Etzion," a Jewish settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, an army statement said.
"The force responded, firing towards the assailant."
A military spokeswoman told AFP the soldier stabbed was a Bedouin tracker who had opened a gate to enable Palestinians to harvest their olive trees.
Palestinian security forces identified the assailant as Mussab Ghanimat, 17, from the nearby village of Sureif.
The hospital treating the soldier said he was stabbed in the shoulder and in light condition. A spokeswoman for the hospital treating Ghanimat said he was in moderate condition and conscious.
There has been a spate of stabbings this month -- mostly by young Palestinians -- against soldiers, police or Israeli civilians.
On Thursday, two men from Sureif stabbed a man in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh before being shot. One of them was killed and the other wounded.
Since October 1, at least 49 Palestinians and one Israeli Arab have been killed, including alleged attackers. Eight Israelis have been killed in attacks.
One Israeli Jew and one Eritrean have also been killed after being mistaken for attackers.
Gush Etzion, or the Etzion Bloc, stretches from Jerusalem to near the flash-point city of Hebron, a focal point of recent violence. On Thursday, a Palestinian attempted to stab an Israeli soldier in the city before fleeing.
Two Palestinians shot as protests swell
Agencies OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/ BERLIN/AMMAN: Nine Palestinians were wounded during fierce clashes with Israeli forces as two alleged Palestinian attackers attempted to board a bus carrying children west of Jerusalem Thursday, and stabbed an Israeli before being shot.
One of the alleged attackers was killed, while the second was in critical condition. The two men were blocked from entering the bus in Beit Shemesh by the driver and others. They then stabbed and moderately wounded a 25-year-old Israeli man near the bus station, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Police did not provide further details on the bus, including whether it was a school bus.
Police said the 20-year-old assailants were wearing T-shirts bearing the symbol of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Islamist movement Hamas.
Israeli security forces said they were from the Palestinian village of Sureif, near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, and alleged one was a Hamas militant.
Meanwhile, violent protests have erupted across the Palestinian territories, sparking fears of a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
Nine Palestinians were wounded, including five from live fire, during clashes with Israeli soldiers in and around Hebron Wednesday night, Palestinian police said.
Israel’s military also said 58 Palestinians had been arrested since Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, including 16 Hamas members and those accused of unspecified “hostile activities” by the military.
Separately Thursday in an area of the West Bank city of Hebron where Jewish settlers live, a Palestinian attempted to stab an Israeli soldier, police said. The soldier was not stabbed and the alleged attacker fled. Speaking to reporters after about four hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he thought there were steps that could reduce the violence and said they needed to be discussed with Jordanian and Palestinian officials.
“I would characterize that conversation as one that gave me a cautious measure of optimism that there may be ... a way to defuse the situation and begin to find a way forward,” Kerry told reporters after he met Netanyahu at a Berlin hotel. Kerry made no reference to Netanyahu’s suggestion this week that Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem during the 1940s, persuaded Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews.
Those comments have attracted wide criticism from Israeli opposition politicians and Holocaust experts, who accused the prime minister of distorting the historical record.
The White House Thursday warned Netanyahu against “inflammatory rhetoric,” responding sharply to the Israeli prime minister’s controversial claim.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said, “I don’t think there’s any doubt here at the White House who is responsible for the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. We believe that inflammatory rhetoric needs to stop.”
Earlier Thursday, the EU’s top diplomat said the “Quartet” of Middle East peace mediators would meet in Vienna Friday to urge Israeli and Palestinian leaders to tone down their rhetoric and calm down the situation on the ground.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the Quartet would “pass a strong message to the parties to calm down the situation on the ground.”
Whatever immediate steps might be taken, diplomats hold out little hope for any resumption of broader Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed in 2014.
A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters that Kerry hopes to persuade both sides to “tamp down” their rhetoric during a four-day trip to Europe and the Middle East in which he also plans to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
King Abdullah II Thursday again warned Israel against any move to change the status quo at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, adding that “achievement of a just and comprehensive peace, on the basis of a two-state [Israeli and Palestinian] solution, is the only way out of the crisis in the region.”
Meanwhile, Israel accused the U.N.’s cultural body of fanning tensions in the region by approving a resolution that criticized the Jewish state for “aggressions” against Muslims seeking access to a Jerusalem holy site.
The resolution also calls for the “prompt reconstruction of schools, universities, cultural heritage sites, cultural institutions, media centers and places of worship that have been destroyed or damaged by the consecutive Israeli wars on Gaza.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the decision was “another step in the continuous Palestinian endeavor to rewrite history and distort the sources of World Heritage in this part of the world.”
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