Tensions occasionally run high around the holy site where throngs of Jewish worshipers regularly pray before the huge beige stones, a remnant of the retaining wall of the Temple Mount revered by Jews as the site where their ancient temples once stood.
On the plateau above the wall, Muslims pray at Al Aksa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Like the wall, the mosque compound, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is in Jerusalem’s Old City, a fiercely contested area captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 war, and Israeli-Palestinian clashes erupt there from time to time.
Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the police, said that based on the initial testimony of the security guard, the shooting victim, a man in his 40s who was not immediately identified, had shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” and had his hand in his pocket at the time he was shot, near a public restroom at the back of the plaza. The guard, from a private firm contracted to secure the entrances to the plaza, fired several shots at the man who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Part of the plaza remained cordoned off hours after the early-morning shooting while police investigated the incident, and the body had not yet been removed.
The Western Wall plaza has recently been in the news as the focal point of a struggle between Jewish women demanding the right to pray in a style traditionally limited to men and the strictly Orthodox forces who oppose them.
Source: New York Times
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