Israel Shuts Temple Mount in Bid to Quell Strife : Mideast: Tear gas is used on Muslim worshipers seeking to break through police lines.

JERUSALEM â€”  Police closed the sacred Temple Mount today and fired tear gas after 200 Muslim worshipers tried to break through the cordon. Jerusalem’s 80-year-old chief Muslim cleric was overcome by tear gas.

The temporary closure came one day after riots on the Temple Mount, Islam’s third-holiest site, in which at least 19 Palestinians were killed and about 140 were wounded by police gunfire.

In an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem today, a Palestinian stabbed two border policemen with a screwdriver. The attacker and another Arab were shot and wounded, police said.

Clashes between stone throwers and police also erupted in three other Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods, and widespread protests were reported in Israeli Arab towns, where leaders called for a two-day strike over the Temple Mount bloodshed.

Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip have demanded U.N. protection and announced a protest strike beginning today, the start of the 36th month of the anti-Israeli uprising in the territories seized during the 1967 Middle East war.

Monday’s violence forced the Palestinian question back toward the top of the international agenda. It was the bloodiest clash in Jerusalem since the 1967 war and the highest single-day death toll in the uprising.

Arab leaders denounced the use of deadly force by Israel. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said the violence could lead to “grave consequences.�

Also condemning the Temple Mount violence were Japan, the Soviet Union, the European Community’s executive body and the president of the European Parliament.

Muslim leaders said today’s closure of the Temple Mount marked the first time police had blocked entry to the 35-acre site and its two mosques since Israel captured the surrounding Old City in 1967. The keys to the gates of the wall around the Temple Mount were returned to Muslim officials this afternoon, and one of the mosque’s doors was opened, Muslim clerics said.

Before control of the Temple Mount was returned to the Muslims, the chief Muslim cleric, the mufti of Jerusalem, led 200 Muslims to a gate of the shrine. Border police blocked their way and ordered them to leave.

When the Muslims refused, police fired tear gas, and the mufti, Saad al-Din al-Alami, was overcome, an Arab reporter said. The mufti was taken to Mukassed Hospital, where he was reported in satisfactory condition.