Israel arrests Palestinian official after Jerusalem unrest

JERUSALEM - Israeli police on Wednesday arrested a senior Palestinian official after recent protests at a highly sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, officials said.

The Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, Adnan Gheith, was among 22 Palestinians arrested overnight in raids in east Jerusalem, official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.

Police spoke of two arrests, including "a senior official from the Palestinian Authority," over suspicions of fraud and forgery.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said they were also arrested in connection with "recent incidents" at the Haram al-Sharif, or Holy Sanctuary, which includes the Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock.

The suspects were being questioned, Rosenfeld said, without providing further details.

Israeli security forces also arrested a prominent former Palestinian militant and a lawyer on Wednesday in a West Bank raid over "terror" allegations, officials said.

"Zakaria Zubeidi and Tareq Barghouti were arrested over their involvement in current severe terror activity," the Shin Bet domestic security service said in a statement, refusing to provide further details.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said Zubeidi, the former head of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades militant group, was arrested in a village near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The arrests also come with Israeli security forces concerned over increased tensions in the West Bank over Jerusalem as well as Israel's decision to withhold tens of millions of dollars in tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority.

Israel is withholding $138 million in tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority over its payments to the families of prisoners, or prisoners themselves, jailed for attacks on Israelis.

Israel is also gearing up to hold elections on April 9.

Zubeidi had faced charges in the past from the Palestinian Authority for taking part in a shooting attack on the residence of Jenin governor Qaddura Musa in 2002.

Musa died after suffering a heart attack during the incident, and Palestinian security forces arrested dozens of people, including Zubeidi, shortly afterwards.

Zubeidi had helped found Jenin's Freedom Theatre.

In 2011, the Freedom Theatre's well-known Israeli-Palestinian director Juliano Mer-Khamis was gunned down in Jenin's refugee camp, in an attack that remains unsolved.

Frequent scene of conflict

The arrests risked further raising tensions surrounding the Haram al-Sharif site, holy to both Muslims and Jews who refer to it as the 'Temple Mount'.

There have recently been confrontations between worshippers and police there over access to a side building in the compound closed by Israel since 2003.

Arguing there was no longer any reason for it to remain closed, Palestinian officials reopened the building on Friday and crowds of worshippers prayed inside despite an Israeli order barring access.

The building is known as the Golden Gate or Gate of Mercy in Arabic.

On Sunday, police arrested and later released a top Palestinian Muslim official, Abdel Azeem Salhab, and his deputy after the holy site incidents.

Salhab is the head of the council of the Waqf in Jerusalem, the religious authority that governs the site in the disputed city.

The arrest drew condemnation from Jordan, the custodian of the holy compound.

The site is the third-holiest in Islam and a focus of Palestinian aspirations for statehood.

It is also the location of Judaism's most holy spot, revered as the site of the two biblical-era Jewish temples.

It is a frequent scene of conflict between the two sides.

Palestinians fear Israel will seek to assert further control over it, while Israel accuses Palestinians of using such claims as a rallying cry to incite violence.

Access to Golden Gate was closed by an Israeli court order in 2003 during the second Palestinian intifada over alleged militant activity there, police say. Waqf officials argue that the organisation that prompted the ban no longer exists.

The site is located in east Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

Palestinian Authority activities are barred from Jerusalem by Israel.

As a result, the PA has a Jerusalem governor located in Al-Ram, just on the other side of Israel's separation wall from the city in the occupied West Bank.