Jewish and Arab protesters gave the United States First Lady, Laura Bush, a hostile reception as she toured religious sites in the Holy Land on Sunday.
Arriving at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, Bush was met by Israelis demanding the release from US prison of Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American who has served 20 years of a life sentence for spying for Israel.
While at the wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine, she pushed a note into it, believed to be a means of directly communicating with God.
At the neighbouring Dome of the Rock, she was met by a small group of Muslim protesters who were kept at bay by a tight cordon of US secret service agents.
”You are not welcome here,” one Palestinian shouted as she entered the mosque. ”Why are you hassling our Muslims? How dare you come in here?”
Bush tried to play down the heckling, saying it could have happened anywhere.
Her tour is interpreted in the region as an attempt to soften criticism of the US among Arabs. She said her reception was a reminder to her of ”what an emotional place this is, as we go from each one of these very, very holy sites to the next”. Later, Bush travelled to the West Bank town of Jericho where she visited the ruins of Hisham’s palace, destroyed by an earthquake shortly after being constructed in the 8th century.
She also met influential Palestinian women who described some of the difficulties of life under occupation. ”We’re reminded again of what every one of us would want,” Bush said afterwards.
”What we all want is peace and the chance that we have right now to have peace, to have a Palestinian state living by a secure state of Israel, both living in democracy, is as close as we’ve been in a really long time.”
Ariel Sharon was heckled by members of the audience during a speech to Jewish leaders in New York on Sunday, while outside a noisy crowd demonstrated against the Gaza pullout plan he was defending. As the Israeli prime minister spoke to a crowd inside Baruch College in Manhattan, a heckler shouted: ”Jews don’t expel Jews!” – Guardian Unlimited Â