Palestinians want Arabs to cut Israel ties over dig

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Feb 20 (Reuters) The Palestinian parliament urged Arab states today to cut ties with Israel in protest at excavation work near Islam's third holiest site which has triggered Muslim protests.

The Palestinian Legislative Council, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, also called on the United Nations Security Council to pressure Israel to safeguard Islamic and Christian sites in Jerusalem.

The council said Arab states should ''sever diplomatic and economic ties (with Israel) and not establish new ones'' in response to the excavation near al-Aqsa mosque.

Few Arab countries have formal ties with Israel. Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with the Jewish state and have diplomatic relations, while some Gulf Arab states have lower level contacts.

Israel says the work near al-Aqsa aims to salvage artefacts before construction of a pedestrian bridge leading up to a religious compound sacred to both Muslims and Jews.

But the work has angered Arabs and Muslims who fear it could damage foundations of the 1,300-year-old mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, captured by Israel in the 1967 West Asia War.

SUMMIT MEETINGS The legislative council said Arab and Muslim leaders should take measures to protect sacred Muslim sites and called for urgent summit meetings of the Arab League and Organisation of the Islamic Conference to pressure Israel.

More than 30 people were wounded in clashes near al-Aqsa earlier this month between Israeli police and stone-throwing protesters angered by the excavation works.

Muslim suspicion over Israeli actions intensified this week when Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Yuval Baruch said storm and earthquake damage in 2004 had exposed remains at the site that could be from an ancient Muslim school.

The director of the Waqf, a Jordanian-backed body that oversees Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, said the fact the discovery was not announced at the time showed Israel wanted to ''destroy the Islamic character of the city''.

Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli Arab campaigner who has led protests against the excavations, called for a new uprising to protest against what he called an ''Israeli crime''.

''This programme will include local and international activities.

All of them are part of our attempt to stop this Israeli crime, which continues until now,'' Salah told Reuters. He called for protests in the Arab and Islamic world.

Israel captured the Old City along with the rest of Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 West Asia war and later annexed the area as its capital in a move not recognised internationally.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

REUTERS MS PM1925