Muslims Israel

Several hundred Muslim fundamentalists rioted Friday at the Al Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's holiest places, hurling rocks at police who retaliated by firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the mob. The stones were thrown from the site, which Muslims hold sacred, onto Jewish worshipers below who were praying at the neighboring Western Wall that Jews consider a sacred site. Five policemen, three Jewish Israelis at the Western Wall and three Arabs suffered minor injuries.

David Mercier, 52, is a religious Jew who lives in Elon Moreh, a conservative Jewish settlement in the West Bank where residents sometimes talk about expelling Palestinians from Israel. His half-brother Munther Hafnay, 44, lives a few minutes away in Palestinian-ruled Nablus and is an activist in Hamas, a radical Muslim group bent on the destruction of the Jewish state. Despite their diametrically opposite beliefs, Mercier and Hafnay are close.

This country's most discordant public square resounded with pealing bells from the Basilica of the Annunciation and a muezzin's call for Muslim prayer Saturday as Pope John Paul II ventured into the heart of a religious standoff in the town of Jesus' boyhood.

Thousands of Muslim men and women gathered at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque to pray on the first Friday of Ramadan, returning to the disputed site that has figured so prominently in more than two months of Israel-Palestinian bloodshed. With an army of Israeli police officers deployed on foot and horseback in and around Jerusalem's walled Old City, the prayers unfolded in relative calm. There were only a handful of skirmishes, allaying fears of a new escalation.

From where she sits in the small grocery her family owns on Casa Nova Street, Juliette Mazzawi can hear the fiery words emanating from the loudspeakers at a makeshift mosque just down the block. The 43-year-old Christian listens to what she considers to be anti-Christian sermons and feels afraid--and she's surprised to feel that way.

Egyptian prosecutors have charged two officials from the Culture Ministry for their role in publishing an allegedly blasphemous book that triggered riots by Muslim students, a police official said in Cairo. Ibrahim Aslan, the ministry official in charge of publications, and Hamdi Galeel, the managing editor of the publications department, were charged with disparaging religion and editing and publishing a work offensive to public morals, the police official said.

Israeli soldiers shot and wounded at least two Palestinians in clashes in the divided West Bank city, witnesses said. Dozens of protesters took to the streets after Palestinian shopkeepers found posters depicting the prophet Muhammad as a pig stamping on the Islamic holy book, the Koran, on about 20 storefronts near a Jewish settlement enclave. Islam and Judaism view pigs as unclean and ban the eating of pork. Israeli police said a 25-year-old Jewish woman from Jerusalem had put up the posters.

The Arab uprising, which for 31 months has been the focus of the Palestinian quest for independence, is showing signs of disintegrating. On the surface, the intifada , as the uprising is called in Arabic, continues without significant change: daily commercial strikes, spasms of stone throwing, cat-and-mouse resistance to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If it is not actually winding down, it appears to be entering a new phase.

Israeli troops Friday shot and wounded at least 10 Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip during a violent protest of the killings on Jerusalem's Temple Mount last week. The clash was sparked by hundreds of worshipers in the Khan Yunis refugee camp who marched out of mosques and paraded with outlawed Palestinian flags chanting, "Our blood for Al Aqsa, for Saddam," Arab witnesses said. They were referring to the Al Aqsa mosque, on the Temple Mount, where 21 Palestinians were killed Oct. 8.

Three Palestinians were wounded by gunfire or stabbings Sunday during a rare clash between Muslim fundamentalists and pro-PLO uprising leaders in the occupied West Bank, the army said. The violence, attributed to a feud over Secretary of State James A. Baker III's peace efforts in the region, brought the 41-month-old uprising against Israeli rule to a new stage of internal warfare.

In an illustration of the centuries-old rivalry over Jerusalem that derailed the Camp David peace talks, Muslim custodians of one of the city's sacred sites locked an entrance used mostly by tourists and Jewish worshipers for several hours Saturday. Officials of the Muslim religious council that administers the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City said they locked a Temple Mount gate because Jewish extremists tried to bring Israeli flags into the complex's Al Aqsa mosque Thursday.

Egyptian prosecutors have charged two officials from the Culture Ministry for their role in publishing an allegedly blasphemous book that triggered riots by Muslim students, a police official said in Cairo. Ibrahim Aslan, the ministry official in charge of publications, and Hamdi Galeel, the managing editor of the publications department, were charged with disparaging religion and editing and publishing a work offensive to public morals, the police official said.

This country's most discordant public square resounded with pealing bells from the Basilica of the Annunciation and a muezzin's call for Muslim prayer Saturday as Pope John Paul II ventured into the heart of a religious standoff in the town of Jesus' boyhood.

Thousands of triumphant Muslims on Tuesday unveiled a cornerstone for a mosque next to a major Christian shrine in the heart of Jesus' boyhood town--a ceremony that set off bitter recriminations between the Vatican and Israel. The Vatican said Israel, by allowing the mosque to be built, was "laying the foundation" for division. Israel hinted that the Holy See's protests were motivated in part by anti-Semitism.

Churches across the Holy Land closed Monday in protest over an Israeli government decision allowing Muslims to build a mosque near a revered Christian shrine in this biblical city. The protest, coming in the very birthplace of Christianity and just weeks before its millennial celebration, jolted the delicate balance of religious coexistence in this region and disappointed scores of pilgrims and tourists.

From where she sits in the small grocery her family owns on Casa Nova Street, Juliette Mazzawi can hear the fiery words emanating from the loudspeakers at a makeshift mosque just down the block. The 43-year-old Christian listens to what she considers to be anti-Christian sermons and feels afraid--and she's surprised to feel that way.

Reinforced riot police and troops kept many Muslim worshipers out of Jerusalem on Saturday in anticipation of trouble on Jewish and Muslim holidays, as Israeli officials expressed growing concern that Jerusalem is becoming the center of the 7 1/2-month-old Palestinian rebellion.

Muslim fundamentalists announced a truce Thursday in their power struggle with pro-PLO leaders. The truce ended a rift that threatened to undermine the nearly 10-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "We must be united despite the differences in our beliefs," the Muslim fundamentalist group Hamas said in leaflets distributed Thursday. "We are against any kind of split."

Muslims demanded the resignation of Nazareth's Christian mayor Monday, a day after sectarian clashes in the town of Jesus' boyhood disrupted its long-standing record of religious tolerance. And in a rare joint statement, the highest representatives of Christian denominations in Israel said they would close churches in Nazareth today and Wednesday to protest attacks against Christians.

The path to Baruch Goldstein's grave runs through a peaceful green park with beds of roses and lavender. Graceful wooden pergolas offer shade to visitors. Up a slight rise and a series of low stone steps lies the elaborate grave of Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred 29 Muslims at prayer in nearby Hebron before he was beaten to death by Palestinian worshipers.