Palestinian Leaders Injured in Scuffle Over Structures

A melee erupted Tuesday in the Old City of Jerusalem as Palestinian legislators and residents protesting Jewish construction in the Muslim quarter clashed with Israeli police and Jewish settlers.

Several lawmakers were slightly injured as police wielding batons forced them to leave the site where settlers had put up seven temporary structures, strung Israeli flags and arranged for several families to move in.

A corrugated metal building swayed and crashed to the ground in a cloud of dust after Israelis and Palestinians scuffled inside it, prompting cheers from Palestinian onlookers.

Israeli officials said later that the building was put up without permits.

A court ordered the work stopped, and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert--usually an outspoken supporter of Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem--said the structures will be torn down and the settlers evacuated. “Building in Jerusalem is a very important and essential issue, but in every case it should take place according to the law,” Olmert said.

Tuesday’s incident was the latest in a series of confrontations in the walled Old City. Both sides said it illustrates that the conflict over Jerusalem, perhaps the most sensitive of the issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians, is heating up.

Neither side shows sign of compromise.

A spokeswoman for Ateret Cohanim, the nationalist-religious group that built the structures and claims ownership of the land, said the construction Tuesday was “the Zionist answer” to the recent stabbing death of a group member in the Old City. “This is the battle for Jerusalem,” Klila Harnoy said. “This is about who will be the landlord of this city, if it will be divided or not.”

The speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, meanwhile, declared: “To hell with all the [peace] agreements if they will not save Jerusalem” for Palestinians. Ahmed Korei, who was the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chief negotiator on the landmark 1993 Oslo peace accords, rushed to the disputed site Tuesday with more than a dozen Palestinian legislators and other dignitaries to protest.

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ current chief negotiator with Israel, was pushed by border guards and fell, but he was uninjured.

Faisal Husseini, the PLO’s top representative in Jerusalem, and Palestinian Agriculture Minister Abdel Jawad Saleh suffered cuts on their arms, as police at first tried forcefully to keep them from entering the site and then to make them leave.

Israeli Public Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani later apologized to Korei and other senior Palestinian officials for their treatment by police and paramilitary border guards.

Erekat expressed gratitude for the apology but said the Israeli government’s support for building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem was pushing the sides toward violence, especially in the absence of progress in peace negotiations. “We don’t need it. We’re at the edge,” he said.

Israel won control of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and quickly declared the entire city its eternal capital. The annexation has not been recognized by most nations, including the United States, although Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the visiting U.S. House speaker, again declared his support Tuesday for Israeli control over Jerusalem.

His comments angered Palestinians, who claim the eastern part of the city as the capital of the independent state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Growing tensions over the city’s status, which is due to be negotiated as part of a final peace agreement between the two sides, have led to a sharp increase in attacks on Jewish seminary students in the Old City and on Palestinian workers in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood near East Jerusalem, police say.

Haim Kerman, a seminary student from Ateret Cohanim, was fatally stabbed this month as he walked to morning prayers at the Western Wall. Police said his slaying might have provoked the killing of a Palestinian in a Jewish religious neighborhood the same week.

Ateret Cohanim members said Kerman’s death made them even more determined to buy Arab properties and settle Jews in the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, and in other disputed areas of Jerusalem.