World Notes ISRAEL

Some 50,000 Muslims, 7,000 Christians and 4,000 Jews are ensconced in separate areas of Jerusalem's walled Old City. Two weeks ago, the fragile demographic arrangements were shattered when 150 Jewish radicals moved into St. John's Hospice, a four-building complex in the city's Christian Quarter owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. Church officials insist the move was illegal. Both sides faced off in the courts and on the streets as rioting crowds disrupted the Easter, Passover and Ramadan holidays.

Last week the Israeli Supreme Court delayed by one week the government decision to evict the Jewish group, pending further deliberation by the court. The decision was likely to keep a sensitive issue simmering, since the Old City is part of territory seized by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and is just one example of a surge in Jewish settlement beyond Israel's 1967 borders.