950806

Israeli shuts

Jerusalem's

Temple Mount

to visitors

JERUSALEM: Israeli police shut Jerusalem's Temple Mount to all visitors on Sunday to defuse tensions between Moslem and Jewish worshippers, a police spokesman said.

Earlier, Moslems shouted four Jews off the mount as thousands of Israelis gathered at the adjacent Western Wall to observe a holy day commemorating the destruction of ancient Jewish temples once situated on the site.

The mount is the third holiest site in Islam, the location of al-Aqsa mosque, and once site of the Jewish temples.

Tourists are allowed on the mount but Jewish prayer services are barred as a provocation. The four Jews were not praying.

Groups of Arabs and Jews, separately at two different gates to the site, later tried to force their way past police cordons onto the mount. Police pushed them back.

"After these incidents the commander of the Jerusalem district decided...to close the mount to all visitors," the spokesman said in a statement to the media

"Only after things calm down completely will the police consider reopening it," he said,

He said the decision was taken after consulting with the police commissioner, Islamic officials, and PLO official Faisal al-Husseini, who were all at the site.

Security forces were on high alert for the holiday during which Jewish ultra-nationalists have vowed to pray on the mount.

PLO head Yasser Arafat's spokesman criticised Israel for not taking firmer action against Israeli right-wing demonstrators.

"The Israeli government is unable to face the extremists' provocations which are a flagrant aggression on Islamic holy sites," spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters.

The Tisha B'Av holiday commemorates tragedies which befell the Jewish people including the destruction of their first temple in 586 BC by the Babylonians and their second temple in AD 70 by the Romans.-Reuter