Israeli police are holding back hundreds of men protesting against women praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall.
In a boost for the plan, the Western Wall's Orthodox Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz endorsed the new prayer section.
People were grooving on balconies, enjoying live music on the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall and slipping prayer notes into the Western Wall.
In Jerusalem, more than 20, 000 Israelis gathered at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, to protest the conference.
Temple Mount and the western wall would become pavilions in which the strictest rules are observed and the most colourful customs preserved.
Today people are free to pray at the western wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, al-Aqsa mosque, or anywhere else they decide.
But this won't be the last time they try to do what they think they should be allowed to do at the Western Wall.
In contrast, when the Western Wall - Judaism's holiest place - was under Arab control until 1967, Jews were not permitted even to visit it.
Correspondents say the proposal risks upsetting Israel's powerful ultra-Orthodox community as well as Muslims who worship near the Western Wall, reflecting the complex religious sensitivities in the area.
When the Israel Defense Forces took the Old City of Jerusalem from the Jordanian Army, a platoon commander sent a jeep to bring Kook to the Western Wall.
Religious tension frequently erupts into violence, most recently at the Western Wall last week when a group of Conservative worshippers were pelted with stones and bags of excrement.
Although they managed to find themselves in the middle of an international incident when the crosses they were wearing caused offence to some settlers at Jerusalem's Western Wall.
Women of the Wall say their central mission is to be able to "wear prayer shawls, pray, and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall".
Now what I see on the BBC news is Moslems coming straight from prayers at Al-Aqsa, armed with stones to hurl at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall below them.
"There is a designated place where they can wear the shawl on the property of the Western Wall but not at the wall itself, " Israeli Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told CNN.
They were a large extended family that, together with me and my American friend, had been riding the bus to Jerusalem where they planned to worship at the Western Wall, the Kotel.
More than 70 years ago, in 1929, a quarrel about control of the Western Wall sparked riots throughout Jerusalem, and then throughout Palestine, in which 133 Jews and 116 Arabs were killed.
"One Western Wall for one Jewish people, " said Mr Sharansky, expressing hope that the site "will once again be a symbol of unity among the Jewish people and not one of discord and strife".
When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland.
He made a historic apology for the wrongs done to Jews by Catholics over the centuries, and visited the Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem and the Western Wall on his trip to the Middle East in 2000.
He did not note that the family had headed to Jerusalem only because Etel had suggested they go to the Western Wall (or that God might have done better by them by not causing the crash at all).
In 2003, Israel's High Court said the women could pray and read from the Torah while wearing the shawls at a different location on the property near the wall, but it did allow them at the Western Wall itself, the organization's attorney said.
Large units of Israeli police, equipped with riot gear, had entered the Muslim shrine after some Palestinians, roused by the attempt of a tiny messianic Jewish cult to lay a cornerstone for a third Jewish temple, had stoned the Western Wall plaza, the adjacent Jewish holy site.
"The White House declared that Obama will send a message from Egypt to the Islamic world but they forget that his messages were already received when he visited the Western Wall and wore the Jewish yarmulke and when he prayed their prayers, " al-Zawahiri said in the 10-minute audio message.
"There are lots of forbidden acts at the Western Wall: Do not spit on the wall, do not pee on the wall, no slaughtering of animals at the wall, and among those one cannot perform a religious act contrary to local customs at the wall, which pretty much only applies to women because there are no local customs men are forbidden from taking part in, " Hoffman said.
The plan would see all but one of the vaults dismantled, with the vault lids and their side panels placed along the western boundary wall.
Another risk is the delicate state of western stockmarkets, especially Wall Street.
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