Jerusalem -
Israel on Thursday closed a flashpoint Muslim-Jewish holy site in Jerusalem, fearing an escalation in violence in the city after a Palestinian suspect tried to assassinate a far-right Jewish activist, and was himself killed by police hours later.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman called the unusual move to close the Temple Mount/Holy Sanctuary not only to Jews but also to Muslims “a declaration of war on the Palestinian people.”
On Wednesday evening, a man on a motorbike shot and wounded Jewish activist Yehuda Glick, 48, who heads the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation which encourages Jews to make pilgrimages to the Temple Mount/Holy Sanctuary.
Witnesses who were only metres away said the man on the motorbike verified Glick's identity by exchanging a few words with him, then shot him in the chest, abdomen, neck and hand, before fleeing.
Glick had been leaving a lecture at Jerusalem's Begin Heritage Centre.
Israeli police early on Thursday surrounded the suspect's house in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Abu Tur.
They shot him dead after he opened fire at them from inside, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told dpa.
A security official told dpa that a gun was found inside the house and a motorbike parked outside.
Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the radical Islamic Jihad faction, identified him as Mutaz Hijazi, 32, one of its members.
It said Hijazi had served 11 years in Israeli jails and was released in 2012.
It and other Palestinian factions, including Hamas, the Islamist movement in de facto control of Gaza, and Fatah - Abbas' secular party - praised Hijazi and issued posters revering him as a hero and martyr.
Islamic Jihad posted on Facebook that Hijazi had used social media to follow Glick's movements. Hijazi worked at the centre's restaurant and had finished his shift shortly before Glick was shot, a manager said.
The disputed Temple Mount/Holy Sanctuary site in Jerusalem's walled Old City is holy to both Muslims and Jews.
Glick has encouraged Jews to pray not only at the Western Wall, a retaining wall that holds up the platform on which the Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques stand, but also on the plateau itself, built by Roman-appointed Jewish King Herod the Great.
The Jewish Biblical Temple that once stood on it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
The mosques were built on it in the seventh century amid the rise of Islam.
As such it is the third-holiest site in Islam, revered by Muslims as the place from which prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven. But the site is also the most sacred in Judaism.
Under a decades-long status quo, Jews are allowed to visit, but not to pray or hold religious services on the Temple Mount.
The Wailing Wall is preserved for Jewish prayer.
Glick's organisation had been demanding a change in the status quo.
Moshe Feiglin, who heads a far-right faction within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, said Glick had been marked as a target by Muslims who oppose his Temple Mount/Holy Sanctuary activism.
The shooting comes amid already high tensions in Jerusalem between Jewish and Arab residents.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat urged Israelis “not to take the law into your own hands.”
Israel's actions in East Jerusalem were “tantamount to a declaration of war on the Palestinian people and their holy places, as well as on the Arab and Islamic nations,” Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said in a statement.
The deputy medical director of Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek hospital, Ofer Merin, said Glick remained in life-threatening condition in intensive care. - Sapa-dpa