West Bank riddled with Israeli obstacles

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel has 592 obstacles such as checkpoints, trenches and barriers across the occupied West Bank and a report that Israel was removing 100 such curbs can not be verified, a UN agency said on Friday.
In all, there are 69 permanently staffed checkpoints, 23 partial checkpoints and 500 unstaffed obstacles in the West Bank, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
This does not include the eight checkpoints on the Green Line between Israel and the Palestinian territory, it said.
The figure was down from a total of 618 registered in August, OCHA said.
In mid-September, the Israeli military announced that it was removing 100 obstacles in the West Bank, but OCHA said it could only confirm the removal of 35.
It said at least 22 obstacles were still in place.
And it was unable to locate another 43 with GPS coordinates provided by the military either because there was no evidence of obstacles removed at the coordinates provided, or because the coordinates indicated a position outside the West Bank.
It also said only 39 of the obstacles included in the list of 100 figured on OCHAs database, indicating that the significance of the remaining 61, in terms of access and movement, could be minimal.
Meanwhile, Israeli security forces on Friday clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians near Jerusalems Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as authorities limited access to the flashpoint site sacred to Muslims and Jews.
Eleven officers were injured and two Palestinians arrested, a police spokesman said after the scuffles, which came as Palestinians staged a one-day strike in defence of the compound they claim is threatened by right-wing Jews.
The trouble started in the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood just outside the gates of the Old City following Juma (Friday) prayers when a dozen masked youths hurled stones at police.
Several hundred Palestinians performed prayers in the open just outside the Old City after being denied access to Al-Aqsa. Security forces set up checkpoints around and within the Old City and turned back Palestinians who do not live or work there, witnesses said.
However, they were allowing in tourists and Jews wanting to pray at the Western Wall - also known as the Wailing Wall - below the mosque compound.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas Fatah party called the strike to peacefully protest and to proclaim the attachment of the Palestinian people to their holy places and to Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the independent Palestinian state.
Fatah accused Israeli forces of allowing rightwing Jewish extremists to enter the mosque compound while denying access to Muslims.
About 600 people took part in a march in the Jordanian capital in support of Al-Aqsa Mosque and protesting Israels violations in Jerusalem, correspondents said. They chanted Death to Abbas and Death to Israel.
In Riyadh, the head of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Abderrahman al-Attiyah, meanwhile, called for an immediate lifting of Israels siege and praised the resistance of the Palestinians.