Israeli police detained a senior Hamas leader Sunday after he secretly entered Jerusalem to lead prayer in the al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported.

Witnesses said Hassan Yousef, Hamas leader in the West Bank, was driving back to the West Bank from Jerusalem when he was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint and taken from his vehicle by police.

Israeli police claimed that Yousef was a resident of the West Bank and did not have a permit to enter Jerusalem.

He violated a ban on worshippers from the West Bank to the mosques on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, added police.

Earlier on Sunday, Youssef called on Muslims to flock to the al-Aqsa Mosque to defend it in an interview with the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

The compound where the al-Aqsa Mosque stands, called by Muslimsal-Haram al-Sharif (Holy Sanctuary) and revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, is Judaism's holiest site and one of Islam's most sacred shrines.

Some 3,000 Israeli police were deployed Sunday in the Old City of Jerusalem in a bid to head off protests on the Temple Mount planned by extreme Jewish rightists to derail the expected Gaza withdrawal plan.

However, despite widespread fears of a spiral of violence in the wake of the threatened protests, only a few dozen Jewish demonstrators arrived and were easily rebuffed by police, who also confronted stone-throwing Arab counter-demonstrators.

The Israeli police were also on high alert to defend against possible protests by Palestinians angered by the Israeli killing of three Palestinian teenagers on Saturday.

(Xinhua News Agency April 11, 2005)