For weeks, Palestinians had been protesting the planned eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, leading to clashes with Israeli police and far-right-wing activists. There were also clashes between Palestinian protesters and the police elsewhere in the city, as well as a spate of assaults by Jewish and Arab street mobs, during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, when tensions often run high.
The violence on Monday began after the police entered the mosque compound around 8 a.m. and fired rubber-tipped bullets and stun grenades at stone-throwing Palestinians.
The Israeli government said the police had been responding after the Palestinians started throwing stones at them. The Palestinians had stockpiled stones at the site in expectation of a standoff with the police and Jewish far-right groups.
Palestinian witnesses said the fighting began after the police entered the mosque compound and began firing.
By the afternoon, more than 330 Palestinians had been injured, with at least 250 hospitalized, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. One person was hit in the head by a bullet and was in critical condition, the medical aid group said, with at least two more in serious or critical condition.
At least 21 police officers were injured, according to the police.
Hamas had been threatening for weeks to respond with force to what it described as Israeli provocations in Jerusalem. “Tampering with Jerusalem will burn the heads of the occupiers,” Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official, said on Sunday night.
The volley of half a dozen rockets that reached the Jerusalem area were the first to be fired toward the city since 2014, an army spokesman said.
Israel returned fire with airstrikes.
“Israel will respond with great force,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in a statement. “We will not tolerate attacks on our territory, on our capital, on our citizens and on our soldiers. Whoever attacks us will pay a heavy price.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that an Israeli airstrike had killed eight Hamas operatives and struck two military sites and a tunnel used by militants.
Separately, the Islamic Jihad militant group fired an anti-tank missile from the Gaza perimeter toward an Israeli vehicle, wounding the driver.
An unusually high number of Palestinian citizens of Israel protested in solidarity with Gaza following the airstrikes, with many photographed waving Palestinian flags.
The Palestinian demonstrations over the planned expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah came after years of frustration over Israeli restrictions on building permits in East Jerusalem, which have forced Palestinian residents to leave the city or to build illegal housing and risk demolition. There have also been recent clashes over restrictions on Palestinian access to a popular plaza at the center of Palestinian communal life.
The unrest was long predicted to come to a boil on Monday, when far-right Israelis were scheduled to march through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/world/middleeast/jerusalem-protests-aqsa-palestinians.html