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Clashes over Israeli extremist march

Israel - Riot police charged demonstrators
Israel - Riot police charged demonstrators

Israeli police have fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse Arab protestors at an Israeli-Arab city in an effort to prevent a clash with ultra-nationalist Jews.

About 30 Jewish demonstrators travelled from Jerusalem to Umm el-Fahm in northern Israel, the seat of an Islamic movement whose leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, has alleged that Israel endangers Jerusalem's Muslim holy sites.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers were sent to Umm al-Fahm to try to prevent clashes between the two sides after an Israeli court allowed the right-wing activists to march in the city.

Riot police, some on horseback, charged about 200 Arab demonstrators who threw stones at them before retreating.

The Jewish protestors want Israeli authorities to outlaw Salah's movement.

One of their leaders said that as Umm el-Fahm was a part of the Jewish state they had the right to march there unhindered.

'We're coming to protest in the city of Umm el-Fahm, that's in the heart of Israel,' organiser Baruch Marzel told supporters before the march.

'We have there a cancer of the Islamic Movement that wants to destroy the state of Israel...from the inside and we want to protest that the government will outlaw the Islamic Movement.'

When Mr Marzel and his group held a similar march in the city in March 2009 clashes erupted and dozens were wounded.

Sheikh Raed Salah, an Umm el-Fahm resident, was jailed by an Israeli court for disorderly conduct and assault after scuffles with police who confronted protestors during engineering work near at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest site in 2007.