JERUSALEM
Mon Feb 8, 2010 2:52pm EST
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem erupted in violence on Monday after Israeli police carried out a raid to arrest tax evaders and Palestinians responded by throwing stones.
Eleven people were arrested, some for involvement in the unrest and others for the non-payment of municipal taxes and other bills, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The violence in Shuafat refugee camp, within the expanded Jerusalem borders that Israel declared after capturing its eastern sector in a 1967 war, was another example of tensions that are always near the surface in a city at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Palestinian schoolchildren threw rocks at police vehicles and Rosenfeld said four officers were slightly hurt. Palestinian officials said 10 Palestinians were injured, none seriously.
Citing biblical roots to the city, Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its "indivisible and eternal capital," a claim that has not been recognized internationally.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel after the 1967 conflict, to be the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who under U.S. pressure ordered a limited settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank, has refused to heed Palestinian demands to halt the construction of homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.
The Israeli military also carried out arrests in the West Bank on Monday. Among those detained was the wife of the mayor of the town of al-Bireh. An army spokesman said she was suspected of involvement in the Islamist Hamas movement.
(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon, Mohammed Assadi and Tom Perry in Ramallah, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Uprooted Palestinian
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