TEHRAN Faced with strident calls by Palestinian factions for an escalation of Intifada, Israel braced for potential unrest on Friday, a standing "Day of Rage" over the past nine weeks and the first weekly prayer day of the Muslim holy month of Ramazan.
The heightened tension came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak outlined ideas for an interim peace accord with Palestinians, who have been locked into a deadly spiral of violence with Israel since late September.
Palestinian officials flatly rejected the proposals, which skeptics said amounted to lax attempts to bolster Barak's popularity ahead of Israeli elections expected within six months.
On Friday, three thousand Israeli police were deployed in occupied Al-Qods to deal with a possible outbreak in violence, days after Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat's political faction called for a surge in the Intifada or uprising during Ramazan.
Israeli troops killed two Palestinians and wounded some three dozen others during clashes Friday in the West Bank and Gaza Strip which also saw Israeli tanks fire on the Palestinian-run city of Ramallah.
Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy in the Gaza Strip, shot in the neck during clashes at Rafah in southern Gaza, hospital officials said.
Israeli troops shot four other Palestinians with live rounds at Rafah, hospital officials said, and another four at the Karni crossing point to Israel.
The Islamic group Hamas said Muslims should be dedicated to the jihad (holy war) for the sake of Bait-ul-Moqaddas, which is occupied by Israeli forces but revered by Muslims as the future capital of the Palestinian state.
Both groups, which are supported by the majority of Palestinians, called on the masses to visit Islam's second holiest site on Friday Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Friday has been a standing "Day of Rage" since unrest broke out in late September, triggered by a provocative visit by Israel's hawkish opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the compound, which is supported by the wailing wall, the most sacred site in Judaism.
For the first time in several weeks, Israeli authorities lifted age restrictions on worshippers permitted into the site, and thousands of men, women and children began pouring in.
An AFP correspondent at the site said the situation there was calm.
But access to the site was permitted only to Arab Israelis and to Palestinians living in the holy city. Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will not be able to worship there because Israel slapped a blockade on the territories at the start of the uprising.
Clashes broke out at Al-Aqsa and the adjacent dome of the rock mosque on September 28 after Sharon's visit.
Some 295 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in the ensuing bloodshed, which has left the peace process in near ruin.
On Thursday, Barak tried to revive peace negotiations when he told a press conference in Tel Aviv that he was willing to transfer to Palestinians another 10 percent of the occupied West Bank, land seized by Israel in the 1967 war. Palestinians have full or partial control over just 40 percent.
Israel also allowed the Palestinian Airport in the Gaza Strip to reopen in a limited capacity on Friday after its most recent closure for three weeks, a top airport official said.
"The airport opened today (Friday), and the first plane landed from Amman carrying 10 Palestinians who received medical treatment in Jordan and the body of a martyr who died in a Jordan hospital," Fayez Zeidan, chairman of the Palestinian Airport Authority, told AFP.
Also, Qatar, the current president of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Thursday urged the European Union to put pressure on Israel to get it to end its military operations against the Palestinians.
"It is important to reactivate the EU's role in the Middle East peace process and to put pressure on Israel for it to end its aggression against the Palestinian people," Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said at a meeting with EU ambassadors to Doha.
Quoted by the official QNA agency, Sheikh Hamad stressed the need for Israel to "pull its troops out of Palestinian territories and allow the deployment of international troops to avoid tension which is worsening the situation and making the peace process more complicated." In the meantime, Some 4,000 protesters also in Paris and other French countries condemned the Zionist atrocities and chanted slogans calling for halt in massacre of the Palestinians in occupied lands.
However, in another European capital, London, government leader declined to answer a question about getting guarantees that the weapons are not being be used by Israelis.
During questions in Parliament on Wednesday, Labour MP Phyllis Starkey asked Blair if he would add to efforts "seeking assurances from the Israeli government that they will not use arms or equipment bought from this country against civilians in the occupied territories." But in response, the British prime minister made no mention about seeking assurance on British arms, only saying that the UK was "engaged in doing what we can to help" in the conflict.