Thousands of Palestinians Blocked From Jerusalem

Israeli police blocked thousands of Palestinians from entering Jerusalem today and barred Arab youths from the historic mosques on the city’s Temple Mount.

The heightened security was aimed at heading off clashes with Jewish extremists and to prevent protests over Israel’s decision to deport four Muslim fundamentalist leaders from the occupied Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, students at the closed Bir Zeit University held a march and stoned police to protest the planned deportations of the four activists, members of the fundamentalist movement Hamas, Israel radio reported.

Police dispersed the demonstration with tear gas and rubber bullets and arrested four protesters, it said.

Officials anticipated angry reaction to the expulsions since Palestinians, many of whom were driven out of Israel with the founding of the state in 1948, consider deportation from the occupied lands the worst possible punishment.

Hamas, or Zeal, is a fundamentalist group that has called for violence against Israelis recently. Hamas claimed responsibility for the slayings of three Israelis at a factory outside Tel Aviv on Friday. The killers remain at large.

The Israeli army said the four to be deported were “instigators of incitement” but did not accuse them of direct involvement in the killings.

Hundreds of paramilitary border police, most in full riot gear, were moved into Jerusalem this morning to block the entry of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Police teams were posted at gates to Jerusalem’s old, walled city and around the Temple Mount, and Arab residents of Jerusalem under age 40 were turned away.

Israel resurrected its controversial deportation policy to calm public anxiety over Arab stabbing attacks on Jews since the Oct. 8 Temple Mount riots, in which 17 Palestinians were shot to death by police.

In Jerusalem, police denied a request by the Jewish extremist group Temple Mount Faithful to go up to the mount, but more than a dozen members of the group defiantly marched nearby with four blue-and-white Israeli flags.

Tension over a planned march by the same group helped set off the Temple Mount riots.

Police did not interfere today as the marchers went to the Wailing Wall at the foot of the mount and lit a candle to mark Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, Israel radio reported.

Police detained four members of another extremist group, the Kach movement, who were demonstrating by the wall. The anti-Arab group was created by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, slain last month by a gunman in New York.