After a visit by Jews to a contested holy site, Israeli riot police clashed with Palestinians throwing fireworks in the passageways of the walled Old City on Sunday.
Clashes in Jerusalem that raised tensions during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan spilled over into Sunday, resulting in 18 arrests and placing Israel’s coalition government under even more duress.
Following a visit by Jews to a contested holy site, Israeli riot police clashed with Palestinians flinging fireworks through the passageways of the walled Old City.
When stone-throwing Palestinians damaged the windows of two buses, some passengers were mildly injured. Also targeted was a small number of Jewish worshipers.
The clashes on Sunday were less violent than those that occurred two days earlier at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, but they were enough to prompt a small but influential Arab party to reconsider its membership in Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s ruling coalition, which no longer has a majority in parliament.
The United Arab List, the country’s first Arab party to enter an Israeli government, announced it was suspending its participation in the cabinet over Israel’s handling of the Al-Aqsa violence and would consider withdrawing if things did not improve. Bennett’s coalition holds 60 of parliament’s 120 members, including four from the United Arab List. Some political analysts believe the statement was only a symbolic effort to relieve pressure on party leaders during the crisis, which they believe will be addressed by the time parliament reconvenes next month. East Jerusalem, which Israel took in a 1967 conflict and which Palestinians want to establish the capital of a future state, contains the Old City.
Tensions over Jerusalem sparked an 11-day battle in the Gaza Strip in May between Israel and Hamas Islamist terrorists.
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