JERUSALEM -- Thousands of Palestinians prayed Friday amid a heavy Israeli police presence at Jerusalem's most contested sacred site after a rare, day-long closing that authorities said was to prevent further escalation of intensifying hostilities.
Men under 50 were still barred from the Old City site, where an Israeli police spokesman said there was no major violence, though officers used riot-control measures to disperse a protest in a nearby neighborhood.
Palestinian leaders had called for a "day of rage" because of the closing Thursday and the killing by Israeli forces of a Palestinian man suspected in the assassination attempt Wednesday night against Yehuda Glick. Glick is an activist who promoted increased Jewish access and prayer at the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
By midafternoon Friday, Israel Radio reported "riots" at several locations in the occupied West Bank, including Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and the often-tense city of Hebron.
About 15,000 people, fewer than on a typical Friday, attended noon prayers at the two Islamic shrines on the revered plateau; men at Al Aqsa Mosque and women at the Dome of the Rock. Some young men seemed to have sneaked in, and others cursed Israeli police officers for checking identification. But the crowds dispersed quickly in a drizzling rain.
Mohammed Obeidat, a 50-year-old construction worker who was inside the mosque, described the Israeli restrictions as unjust.
"There is no state in the world which prevents prayer at the mosque, except Israel," he complained. "They want to tell us, 'We are the boss here.'"
Arafat Abbas, 35, was among about 200 people who prayed at the Lion's Gate to the Old City after being stopped at one of several police checkpoints around the Aksa compound.
"Things are moving from bad to worse," said Abbas, who lives in the Old City. "They want to control our mosque. People will not stay silent."
Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, said shortly after the end of noon prayers that "things are relatively quiet" at the site and across Jerusalem.
"There were no major incidents reported on the Temple Mount," he said. "There were a few firecrackers in the Old City, nothing major."
In the adjacent Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, a "strong police presence" dispersed a restive crowd, Rosenfeld said.
The contested Jerusalem site, where ancient Jewish temples once stood, is the holiest in Judaism, the third holiest in Islam, and also sacred to Christians who believe Jesus worshiped there.
Israel seized it with the rest of east Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, but immediately handed back control of everything but security at the site to the Islamic Waqf, which is run by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
A small band of religious Jews, including Glick, a 48-year-old Israeli-American who was seriously wounded in Wednesday's shooting, have agitated in recent years against Israel's prohibition of non-Muslim prayer at the site, with some calling for a third temple to be erected there.
Palestinian, Jordanian and other Arab and Islamic leaders have warned that this could lead to a holy war, and clashes between worshipers and security forces have become more frequent.
A spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, called the closure Thursday "a declaration of war."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has tried to calm the situation by making clear that he has no intention of changing the status quo in the city's holy sites. He also has added 1,000 police officers to Jerusalem's streets in recent days.
Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Israel's minister of internal security, toured the Old City on Friday and explained in a radio interview why the government had closed the sacred site the day before.
"We took this step to prevents riots, and today, we already allowed it to open for Friday Prayer," he said. "I will not allow the Temple Mount to be damaged, and I will not change the status quo."
Israel Radio reported one of Israel's chief rabbis met on Thursday with a leading Islamic cleric and that the two had called for freedom of prayer and an end to the "cycle of blood."
Rabbi Aryeh Stern, one of Jerusalem's two chief rabbis, was quoted on the Israeli news site Kipa as saying that while he did not believe that Jews should ascend the Temple Mount, he also did not think the Israeli authorities should prevent them from doing so.
Israel allows Jews and other non-Muslims to visit the site at certain hours, but they are prohibited from openly praying there. The authorities occasionally bar Muslims from the site during Jewish holidays, or close it to non-Muslim visitors, citing security concerns.
A Section on 11/01/2014