JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Jerusalem's senior Muslim clergies announced on Thursday that worshippers can return to pray inside a contested shrine, following two-week-long violent clashes over new Israeli security measures at the site.
Hebrew-language Channel 2 TV reported that the Jerusalem Mufti Mohammed Hussein and the Waqf, a Jordanian body that administrates the site, ruled that the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound has been restored.
Prayers will be resumed on Thursday, the clergies said.
The announcement came hours after Israeli authorities took away the overhead metal bridge and the railings of surveillance cameras that they had recently installed at the entrance to the flashpoint site, triggering nightly violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police.
Over the past two weeks, hundreds of Muslims were holding daily mass prayers outside the site to protest against the measures, following calls by Muslim leaders.
The detectors, installed following a shooting attack that killed three Israeli policemen, sparked a huge protest. They are seen by the Palestinians as a violation of the status quo at the Muslim-run compound and an Israeli attempt to gain more control over the site.
In the clashes that ensued, at least four Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces and hundreds of others were injured. Three members of an Israeli family in a West Bank settlement were killed by an assailant who said he did it "to redeem Al-Aqsa."
The site, known to Muslim as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, is located in East Jerusalem's Old City, a territory that Israel seized from Jordan in a 1967 war and annexed shortly later. The annexation has never been internationally recognized.
