ISRAEL - Jan. 8 - Mass Rally Hits Peace Plan.

About 100,000 religious activists and nationalists pour into the contested heart of Jerusalem at night and "pledge allegiance" to the holy city (and put on a strong, festive show of opposition to an American peace plan that seeks to divide it. The peace plan itself, proposed by Pres. Clinton in December, was faltering). The "One Jerusalem" demonstration begins at the Jaffa Gate of the Old City. A huge crowd, many young, many wearing knitted skullcaps and many wrapped in Israeli flags, chant and dance under the floodlit stone walls. They enjoy a Hasidic version of the disco song, "I will survive". Jerusalem's major, Efud Olmert - a principal organiser along with Natan Sharansky, the Russian immigrant leader - announces to great cheers that there are 400,000 people participating. David Weinberg, who works as a spokesman for Bar Ilan University, says it is only the second rally he has attended in 20 years. The last one took place in Canada, calling for Sharansky, then a dissident, to be freed from a Soviet prison. "Now Sharansky is liberated, and he's here fighting for Jerusalem", Weinberg says. (Part of a huge security presence, the police stood guard to prevent demonstrators from extending their human chain entirely around the walled Old City they seek to keep united. The police blocked access to the Palestinian sections to avert clashes, turning bank those who sought to march to the Damascus Gate. At that Gate, in a brief skirmish, some Palestinians youths threw stones at the Israeli police. Shopkeepers in the Muslim quarter were pulling down the metal shutters of their stores as the crowd gathered. The Zionist tunes blaring from loudspeakers around the walls did not penetrate into the quiet interior of the marketplace. The rally - with such placards as, "We pray to Jerusalem, they turn their back to Jerusalem and pray to Mecca" - seemed a world away).