Israel government faces new split amid violence at Jerusalem holy site
- Arab-Israeli Raam party ‘suspended’ its participation in the coalition government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett
- Dozens of Palestinians were wounded in weekend clashes with Israeli riot police inside the Al-Aqsa mosque compound
Israel’s fractious governing coalition faced a new split 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 this month 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 in a statement on Sunday.
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.
