Israeli army forces and Palestinian protesters clash near the West Bank city of Nablus, April 13, 2022. Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian and injured 31 others on Wednesday morning during clashes near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, said medics and eyewitnesses.(Photo: Xinhua)

Israel's fractious governing coalition faced a new split on Sunday when Arab-Israeli party Raam "suspended" its membership, after violence around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site that wounded 170 people over the weekend.

The government - an ideologically disparate mix of left-wing, hardline Jewish nationalist and religious parties, as well as Raam - had already lost its razor-thin majority in April when a religious Jewish member quit in a dispute over leavened bread distribution at hospitals.

Since then, days of violence around Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, put Raam under pressure to quit too. "If the government continues its steps against the people of Jerusalem... we will resign as a bloc," Raam said.

The declaration came hours after more than 20 Palestinians and Israelis were wounded in incidents in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The latest clashes take the number of wounded since Friday to more than 170, at a tense time when the Jewish Passover festival coincides with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

They also follow deadly violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank starting in late March, in which 36 people have been killed.

Early on Sunday, police said "hundreds" of Palestinian demonstrators inside the mosque compound started gathering piles of stones, shortly before the arrival of Jewish visitors.
Jews are allowed to visit but not to pray at the site, the holiest place in Judaism and third-holiest in Islam.

Israeli police said its forces had entered the compound in order to "remove" the demonstrators and "reestablish order."

The Palestinian Red Crescent said 19 Palestinians were injured, including at least five who were hospitalized. It said some had been wounded with rubber-coated steel bullets.

An AFP team near the entrance to the compound early Sunday morning saw Jewish worshippers leaving the site, barefoot for religious reasons, and protected by heavily armed police.

Outside the Old City, which lies in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, Palestinian youths threw rocks at passing buses, smashing their windows, resulting in seven people being treated for light wounds, Shaare Zedek hospital said.

The police said they had arrested 18 Palestinians, and Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev said Israel would "act strongly against anyone who dares to use terrorism against Israeli citizens."

AFP