Worshipers return to synagogue; Israel begins razing homes

The threat -- perhaps more accurately the dread -- of an incipient but deadly "religious war" was expressed by Muslim clerics, Christian leaders and Jewish Israelis, one day after a pair of Palestinian assailants, wielding meat cleavers and a gun, killed five Israelis, including a prominent American-Israeli rabbi in a Jerusalem synagogue.

"All of us are scared that there will be a religious war, that extremists from both sides will start fighting each other," said Oded Wiener, an Israeli Jew from the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land.

For weeks, Jerusalem has been a center of clashes, protests and deadly attacks that began over one of the city's major flash points -- a contested religious site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Jewish activists have been pressing the Israeli government to insist that Jews be allowed to pray on the raised esplanade, which also harbors the Al Aqsa mosque, the third most holy site in Islam. In the first and second Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, attacks against Israelis were largely propelled by Palestinian political and militant factions and leaders. These days, security officials say most are carried out by so-called "lone wolf terrorists" who don't belong to any organized group. In the past, Palestinian attackers often made clear that they wanted to end the Israeli occupation of what they consider their lands. Today, some relatives of the Palestinian assailants suggest the attacks are motivated only by perceived threats against Al-Aqsa.

In a bid for calm on Tuesday, Wiener and leaders across the religious spectrum joined in a prayer meeting Wednesday at the synagogue where the attacks took place. Weiner said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pressed for the gathering, which also included figures from each of Israel's minority sects, including the Druze, Ahmadiyya, Circassian, and Christian communities, as well as a leader of the Muslim groups in Israel.

But bitterness was also on display in the city. Sheikh Mohammed Kiwan, head of the Union of Imams in Israel, who traveled to Jerusalem from the north of the country, attempted to quiet tempers among the street outside the synagogue, where neighbors and friends of those killed had gathered to pray. Young students of yeshivas -- Jewish religious schools -- confronted him, accusing him and all Muslims of inciting violence to kill Jews.

"We condemn all acts of violence," Kiwan told them, remaining calm. "This is a house of worship. It is irrelevant if it was a Muslim or a Jew that was killed here."

"Did you come to apologize? You are raising savages," one woman yelled from the balcony of her apartment across the street from the synagogue.

Across Jerusalem in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, which rests in a deep valley at the edge of the Old City, Israeli security forces used sledge hammers and explosives to demolish the apartment belonging to the family of a Palestinian assailant who in October used his vehicle as a battering ram to kill a to kill a 3-month-old Israeli Jew in a stroller and a visiting Ecuadorian.

The local imam, Sheikh Mussa Odey, predicted that violence will worsen, and he said that the seeds of the religious war were sown long ago.

"We have grown to hate each other," he said.

Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Rabbi of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, said the gory photographs released by the Prime Minister's press operation of Jews wrapped in their religious regalia, lying in a pool of their own blood at the scene of Tuesday's killings, "returns us all to the nightmares of the past."

Rabinowitz blamed Palestinian leaders for "brazenly and shamelessly lying to them and trying to bring down on the world a bloody religious war."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu promised Tuesday, after the synagogue attack, that the homes of Palestinians linked to recent attacks on Israeli civilians would be razed. Security forces made good on that order early Wednesday, when squads of police and demolition experts descended on the fourth story apartment of a Palestinian man involved in the October attack. The attacker, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, was shot dead by police at the scene.

Israeli police hustled out members of the extended Shaludi family, and they watched from across the street, as security forces knocked down walls, smashed windows and doors, and even tore up the tile floors. The home-razing tactic was common a decade ago, but Israel has rarely used it in recent years.

"This will stop nothing," said an uncle, Amer al-Shaludi. "The cycles will go on and on."

He said the violence was driven not by Palestinian nationalist sentiment, but by Jewish activists and Israeli politicians who press for Jews to pray the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

"It is our soul, it is our religion," said Shaludia. "It cannot be permitted."

Odey, the local cleric, watched from across the street. Asked if the demolition would serve as a deterrent to other Palestinians who consider attacking Israelis, he said no.

"How many houses have the Israelis knocked down? Has this prevented a single thing?" he asked. All it does, the imam said, "is make the people more angry."

At the Vatican, Pope Francis condemned the synagogue slayings and urged both sides to end the "spiral of hatred and violence and take courageous decisions for reconciliation and peace."

But Israel appeared to be moving toward more aggressive actions, which seemed likely to provoke Palestinian outrage and possible backlash.

Israel's public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, announced he would "ease restrictions" on Israelis carrying guns for self-defense. He indicated the rule change could apply to anyone with a gun license -- private security guards and off-duty army officers, for example -- and allow them to be armed even when off duty.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett called on the government to launch a military operation "go to the source" of terror in the holy city.

"We need to move from defense to attack, like we did in Operation Defensive shield," Bennett told Israel's Army Radio, citing the name for the military campaign waged during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, more than a decade ago.

"Go in with Border Police forces, make arrests, create intelligence channels, stay there on a permanent basis, not just when there's a terror attack," he added.