How the Fuse of Jerusalem’s Religious Rivalry Was Lit at Temple Mount : Violence: Festivity turned to tragedy at the holy site. There were danger signs, but they went unheeded in a city long divided by faith.

Two Fridays ago, the sermon at the Al Aqsa Mosque included a special appeal. Muslims, the preacher said, must gather at the mosque the following Monday to defend it from Jews who he said planned to lay the cornerstone for a new edifice to replace the Second Temple, destroyed nearly two millenniums ago, and to take the place of one of Islam’s most hallowed shrines, the Dome of the Rock.

Below, behind the cordon where Jewish worshipers prayed at the Western Wall facing inward toward the Holy of Holies that was the heart of the Second Temple, young Israelis belonging to the fundamentalist Temple Mount Faithful handed out leaflets announcing a deed that the Muslims feared: a march would take place to the Temple Mount, the Islamic site known in Arabic as the Haram al Sharif, the noble sanctuary.

The parallel appeals were probably paid little heed by most residents of the city. Even in the Old City, site of the shrines, early Friday business went on as usual: Souvenir store proprietors were alert for the few intrepid tourists who still visit Jerusalem; vegetable stalls sold their remaining stocks for the weekend; youngsters such as 15-year-old Ezzedin Hamid Yassini kicked soccer balls in the old alleyways. It was a normal day. Intense religious rivalry is hardly unusual for Jerusalem.

But a fuse had been laid that would lead to an explosion of violence. A riot the next Monday would rock the city, and the shots would be heard in Washington and Baghdad, at the Vatican and in Mecca.

Piecing together the precise flow of events from interviews and published reports is difficult. Already, the bloodshed has entered the folklore of Israeli and Palestinian alike, each seeking advantages to be found in being victims.

In its essentials, last Monday’s violence at the Temple Mount differed only in scale from scores if not hundreds of other such incidents during the nearly three-year Arab uprising in the occupied territories. Danger warnings were underestimated. Hair-trigger passions blew out of control. Bullets answered rocks. Politicians scrambled to hold to the high moral ground.

On Monday a week ago, the Western Wall was festive. About 20,000 Jews had gathered for the Festival of Priestly Blessings, one of the benchmarks leading to the end of the Succot holiday. The holiday celebrates the fall harvest and commemorates the wandering of the Jews during the Exodus. But as the crowd dispersed in midmorning, signs of trouble were evident.

Followers of the Temple Mount Faithful, barred by police and court order from scaling the heights of the Muslim sanctuary, instead began a procession to the Shiloah Pool, a sacred Jewish site south of the city. After they passed, youths from the village of Silwan stoned tour buses along the perimeter road outside the Old City.

The movement of the Temple Mount Faithful seemed to have contradictory effects on police and Muslims. The police had sent a group of 50 border and municipal police to the Temple Mount, fewer than usual. A similar march a year ago had set off rock-throwing by schoolchildren outside the Old City. Why should this year be worse?

Police also informed Muslim officials that the Temple Mount Faithful would not enter the compound. The main steps in avoiding a crisis were thought to have been taken.

A report from the Jewish human rights monitoring group B’Tselem noted that “it was feared that Muslims would regard the reinforcement of forces stationed at the Temple Mount as a provocation.”

Commented Avraham Torgman, the police operations chief (who was not present at the riot): “Even the police leadership suggests that the disturbances were planned beforehand, and it is also illogical to think that the presence of so many persons in the area would not be noticed by police.

“Thus, the question is: Why weren’t the police prepared? In the past, there were disturbances involving 15,000 and 20,000 Arabs at the Temple Mount and despite this, we were able to break up the demonstrations with conventional means.”

Palestinians in Al Aqsa and at the Dome of the Rock, numbering about 3,000, looked differently at the progress of the Temple Mount Faithful. The clutter outside the walls suggested that their fears were being realized. But what spark set off their sudden rage is a subject of much confusion.

Al Haq, a Palestinian human rights group based in the occupied West Bank, claims that police set upon a group of chanting women with tear gas.

Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian nationalist leader who was detained for incitement, told investigators that a border policeman dropped and set off a tear-gas canister while passing it to a colleague.

A Palestinian standing at the Dome of the Rock told B’Tselem investigators that he saw a tear-gas canister drop after a yellow helicopter passed overhead.

Police say that rocks were thrown at police stationed atop an Islamic court building, prompting the use of tear gas.

Early press accounts reported that inflamed Muslim preachers urged their faithful to defend the mosque and kill Jews.

In any case, response from worshipers inside Al Aqsa was abrupt and fierce. Hundreds poured out the gaping door of the graceful, black-domed structure and drove police from the Temple Mount. If the police had not taken the threat of confrontation seriously, the Palestinians had.

Earlier that morning, young Palestinians had fanned out across the Old City and Arab districts of Jerusalem to urge Muslims to go to Al Aqsa and defend it. Ezzedin Hamid Yassini, wearing jeans and a pale blue shirt, stopped playing soccer in front of the Habash Pharmacy to head for the mosque with his companions.

A merchant on the same street said he refused to accompany them, telling them he had already attended dawn prayers. “They were angry, the merchant said of the youths. “They accused me of being a traitor.”

Palestinian rivalries may have played a part in the insistence of some Palestinians that the mosque must be defended and the reluctance of others to take part.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas for short in Arabic, was the prime organizer of defense, Palestinian activists say. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which has been losing ground to the fundamentalist Hamas for the hearts of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, took a secondary role.

Husseini, the Palestinian nationalist leader, came on his own; other leading uprising activists were told that attendance was optional.

“Husseini felt that for his credibility, he had to make an appearance,” an associate said.

Once police were driven off the Temple Mount, rock-throwing on Jewish worshipers below began in full force. Remnants of the morning gathering--men, women and children--scurried for cover and to buses that were rushed in to evacuate them.

The numbers present in the Western Wall plaza, like most other statistics about the episode, are subject to wild variation. Palestinians say there were hundreds. B’Tselem estimates 10,000. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, in one radio interview, put the figure at 50,000.

In all, 22 Jewish worshipers were injured; all were released from hospitals within 24 hours.

The stone-throwing, starting about 10:45 a.m., lasted for about 20 minutes. Rioters within the confines of the Temple Mount barred the Moghrabi Gate and the Gate of Chains, the usual entrances for police reinforcements.

Inside, a group invaded a police post where two municipal employees, Daoud Alan, who keeps a police log, and Kamal Asila, a janitor, were alone. Asila escaped to quarters of the Supreme Muslim Council, or Waqf, the Muslim caretaker of the Haram al Sharif. But Alan, a policeman, was trapped inside and informed police by radio that rioters “are coming up to the police point.”

Waqf stewards arrived and rescued Alan before the police post was set ablaze. The fire was reported by a police lookout, according to the B’Tselem report. Later, some police officers would attribute the ferocity of their counterattack to rumors that police officers were trapped in the fire.

A newspaper reporter asked Jerusalem Police Chief Arieh Bibi if rumors that Alan was being lynched contributed to the police response. “It is possible that we would have exercised greater moderation going in,” Bibi replied.

Police, 200 strong, broke down barricades of stone and lumber at the Moghrabi Gate and Gate of Chains. They rushed in and drove rioters into the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Police insisted that they fired in self-defense in the face of human-wave assaults by Palestinians.

By several accounts, police set their rifles on automatic, triggering bursts of fire without explicit command. “Automatic fire, it appears, was responsible for most of the fatalities,” wrote Zeev Schiff, defense correspondent for the Haaretz newspaper.

Muslim preachers by some accounts tried to calm the crowd and, by loudspeaker, implore the police to stop shooting. Other accounts insist that the preachers goaded the crowd to fight.

The shooting lasted at least half an hour and some say for a full 60 minutes. When the gunfire erupted, Palestinians fled across the great plaza, in and behind the Dome of the Rock and into Al Aqsa. Dead and wounded fell on the stone steps leading up to the Dome and in the plaza in front of Al Aqsa.

Some of the wounded were carried onto the Oriental carpets of the mosque. The oldest fatality was Najla Saad Siyam, a 70-year-old woman who died of tear-gas inhalation. The youngest was Ezzedin Hamid Yassini, hit by bullets in the head, shoulder, abdomen and leg.

Two of the dead were buried on the grounds of the holy sites and the absence of their bodies at hospitals accounted for a discrepancy in the reported final death toll. Hospitals reported 19 dead, but the two buried near Al Aqsa brought the figure to 21. The government said 150 were wounded.

After the shooting, police minister Roni Milo insisted, “The forces behaved with great restraint, and not until the police were in mortal danger did we open fire at anyone.”

A cult of martyrdom enveloped the Haram al Sharif; youths had dipped their hands in blood and made palm prints on the marble walls of the Dome of the Rock. Spent cartridges and tear-gas canisters were put on display inside Al Aqsa, and a room was set aside for the blood-soaked clothing of the dead, including Yassini’s shirt.

Palestinians and Israelis alike explain the rage at the Temple Mount as the result of months of rising tensions in Israel, specifically in Jerusalem. They also point out that while the outside world might consider a battle over a patch of land inside the Old City hard to understand, here it is the basis for a blood feud.

For some Jews, recovery of the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple was destroyed by Roman occupiers more than 1,900 years ago, would be a step toward Jewish redemption and a herald for the coming of the Messiah.

For Muslims, who conquered the mount in the 7th Century, it is a direct conduit from Allah to his people--the place from where the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven.

During the Christian interregnum of the Crusades, a church was built and named Solomon’s Temple; both Jews and Muslims were forbidden to enter the precinct. Saladin recovered the Haram al Sharif for Muslims in the 12th Century.

“This for some,” said Mahdi Abdul-Hadi, who heads a Palestinian think tank in Jerusalem, “is what the conflict is all about.”