Violence outside al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem

Israeli police faced Palestinians throwing rocks at Jews outside Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque yesterday during Israel's annual celebration of its capture of Arab East Jerusalem 38 years ago.

Police, who hurled several stun grenades as they moved into the area known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), pulled away from the shrine about an hour later after calm was restored.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said Palestinians had thrown stones at groups of Jews visiting the compound on "Jerusalem Day", which marks Israel's seizure of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war.

Two Jews were slightly injured and one Palestinian was arrested, he added.

Israel Radio said local Muslim religious authorities had appealed for calm as several hundred chanting Palestinians faced off against police and waved green Islamic flags outside al-Aqsa to avoid violence.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, commenting on the incident, told reporters in the West Bank that visits by right-wing Jews to the holy site, one of the most politically sensitive in Jerusalem, could have "dire consequences".

Jewish visitors regularly tour the compound, where two biblical temples once stood, but Israeli authorities do not allow them to pray there, enter al-Aqsa or hold any political demonstrations for fear of angering Muslims.

After the flareup at the shrine, the Temple Mount Faithful, a Jewish fringe organisation, marched towards the compound but stopped about 50 metres short of its closed gate in an apparent bid to avoid a confrontation with police.

"We will liberate the Temple Mount," said signs carried by the group, which numbered around 50 and sang the Israeli national anthem before turning back.

The marchers, who advocate building a new Jewish temple in place of al-Aqsa, also held aloft a cardboard coffin marked "disengagement", showing their opposition to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank starting in mid-August.

In the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the militant Islamic Jihad group said any harm to al-Aqsa would be met with "martyrdom operations, rocket firings, infiltrations and bombings".

A Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 after Mr Sharon, Israel's Opposition leader at the time, toured the compound. Violence has dropped since Mr Abbas and Mr Sharon declared a ceasefire in February.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state they hope to establish in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital.