ISRAEL - Feb 9 - Israel Police Break Up Al-Aqsa Protest.

Israeli riot police storm Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque complex at the end of Friday prayers to break up a demonstration by worshippers protesting against reconstruction work they claim is cover for a takeover of Islam's third holiest site. Fifteen police and 17 Palestinians were wounded as security forces fired stun grenades and teargas rounds at protesters throwing stones, bottles and even the shoes they had removed before entering the mosque for the weekly prayers. It was the worst confrontation in a controversy that has in the last week reverberated around the region and threatened to spread across the Palestinian territories. About 3,000 police were deployed in Jerusalem's Old City in anticipation of trouble after the start of Israeli reconstruction work just outside the 35-acre compound sparked protests across the Islamic world. The Israeli authorities had barred men aged under 45 from attending yesterday's prayers. In a sermon, the Friday imam told worshippers: Those who demolish the house of the Muslims are the enemies of God". The compound that contains the gilded Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque is known by Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif - the Noble Sanctuary - and by Jews as the Temple Mount. Jewish worshippers praying at the foot of the Western Wall fled as the boom of stun grenades echoed across the Old City. The controversial reconstruction work is being carried out just yards from the Western Wall, the last vestige of the second Jewish temple destroyed by the occupying Romans in 70AD. Israeli earth movers this week began preparing the ground for reconstruction of an ancient bridge to the compound's Maghrebi Gate that collapsed three years ago. Israel's Antiquities Authority is to supervise the dig in order to safeguard any archeological remains. Yesterday's violence came hours after the Fatah and Hamas movements signed a landmark agreement in Mecca to establish a national unity government that Palestinians hope will end a worsening armed conflict between the rivals and prompt the international community to lift its boycott of the Hamas-ruled PA. Palestinian and other Arab officials were swift to accuse the Israeli authorities of provoking the Jerusalem clashes to overshadow a deal that could potentially strengthen the hand of Mahmoud Abbas, the PA's Fatah president, in talks he is due to hold next week with Ehud Olmert, Israeli PM. Most members of the international Middle East quartet - the US, EU, UN and Russia - yesterday reserved judgment on the Fatah-Hamas agreement pending further consultations on its implications. EU foreign ministers are due to discuss the issue on Feb 5. The quartet had demanded that any new government should recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept previous agreements between the Palestinians and Israel. A statement from Mecca limited itself to saying the national unity government, to include ministers from both parties, would "respect existing agreements". Philippe Douste-Blazy, French foreign minister, said: The inclusion in this government's programme of respecting international resolutions and agreements signed by the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] constitutes a step in the right direction towards full adherence to the international community's demands". Saudi Arabia, host of the Mecca talks, on Feb 8 denounced the Israeli construction work at the Aqsa complex. A government official said the dig was a violation of the sanctity of the holy site and called for global intervention to stop it. Other protests have come from Egypt, Syria and Iran and from Jordan which has acted as external guardian of the mosque complex since it lost the Old City to Israeli forces in the 1967 Middle East war. Feb 8 clashes were the worst since September 2000 when a visit by Ariel Sharon, Israeli opposition leader and later PM, sparked the second Palestinian uprising. As then, yesterday's Palestinian protests rapidly spread to the West Bank where stone-throwing youths attacked Israeli soldiers in Hebron, Bethlehem and the main crossing point from Jerusalem to Ramallah. Fatah militants had earlier warned that continued work at the site would spark a third intifada, while the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, linked to Fatah, threatened to attack synagogues. The Israeli government has insisted the work will continue, although the controversy prompted a cabinet split when Amir Peretz, defence minister, this week urged that the project be suspended. Israeli officials said the work was being carried out beyond the walls of the complex, which falls under the authority of the Muslim Waqf. Palestinians, however, are sensitive about any construction near the site, seeing it as an encroachment on the status quo that governs relations between the city's religious groups. That sensitivity is heightened by the proximity of the Old City's Jewish Quarter where zealots exhibit a model of a putative Third Temple and prepared vestments to be used at the site if it were restored to the Jews. Motti Dan Hacohen, leader of the Ateret Cohanim movement that has sought aggressively to acquire property in the Muslim quarter and that trains its followers in ancient Temple ritual, summoned fellow Jews to a promenade overlooking the mosque complex to perform prayers.