Jewish extremists talked of firing a missile at a key Islamic holy site in Jerusalem and hundreds of others blocked main highways with burning tires -- examples of how opponents hope to scuttle Israel's planned summer pullout from Gaza and part of the West Bank.
Israeli police and officials said Monday they interrogated three Jews who planned to buy a missile from criminals and fire it at the Dome of the Rock, the ancient gold-topped shrine on the same plaza as the al-Aqsa Mosque. Such an attack would likely ignite violence throughout the Middle East.
Officials admitted that hard evidence in the missile case was weak, but the highway protesters showed that even relatively small numbers can tie down police -- a main goal of the opponents. More than 300 people were detained, police said.
The Cabinet and parliament have repeatedly approved the pullout plan, driving opponents to desperate measures to stop it. Many are driven by messianic religious beliefs, rejecting the right of a temporal government to make policies.
In Jerusalem, police pulled flaming tires off a key road with crowbars, and in other places, they hauled the protesters themselves off the roads.
At the northern entrance to Jerusalem, two tires burned in the middle of the road, forcing motorists to slow to a crawl and drive on the sidewalks to pass the tires and the billowing black smoke.
Protester Shlomo Sternberg, waving a flag, believed the pullout would be canceled.
"I am sure that we will not see that dark, evil day the prime minister and government are planning," he told Channel Two TV.
Irate motorists shouted at the demonstrators, and a TV station showed one man punching a protester blocking the highway.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
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