It was nearly noon and the young men were engaged in a shoving match with the cordon of Israeli riot police blocking the gates of the mosque.
Yesterday, on the third Friday since two peoples began their descent into an unholy war, it all came home to the heart of the matter: the sacred ground of the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem.
In the tangle of lanes around the mosque, thousands of Israeli riot police were deployed in the greatest show of force since the onset of the violence.
Only middle-aged men, and women, were allowed inside for afternoon prayers, and the crowds were seething with frustration.
On the other side of Jerusalem's old walled city, meanwhile, the most sacred shrine of the Jews was almost deserted. Despite the approach of the Sukkot festival, few worshippers dared visit the Wailing Wall.
As the two peoples returned to their faith, there could hardly have been a greater divide. One nation was angry and defiant. The other, Israel, was bracing for more horrors to come.
In heated scuffles on the al-Mojahedin Street, named for holy warriors, Israeli riot police used canes to turn back young men from the mosque.
Mercifully, there was no real violence, and the massive police deployment broke the pattern of earlier Fridays when youths stormed out of the mosques throwing stones and petrol bombs.
At Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the walled city, mounted policemen drove the crowds back with tear gas. Some men rolled out their prayer mats and knelt. Others stood their ground. "Saddam, Saddam, the conqueror. Go back to bombing Tel Aviv. If you want us to wear a commando uniform, we are ready," they screamed.
After Yasser Arafat freed 350 militants from Palestinian jails, including the top bomber of the Hamas movement, that is precisely Israel's fear. Yesterday there was intense security around shopping malls and other public places, and the army issued warnings of a renewal of terror. "We understand that they understand that they have a green light for terrorist attacks," said Major Yarden Vatikay, an Israeli army spokesman. "These are people who do not plan to fire off sporadic fire. These are people who plan to demolish buildings, hit buses, and kill women and children."
In the afternoon, a few dozen Israeli activists stood outside a square in west Jerusalem pleading for peace.
Twenty four hours after all of Israel seems to have watched and recoiled in horror from the uncut television footage of the killing of their soldiers, a consensus seemed to be forming that peace was dead, and that the Israeli left had been fools to even think of negotiating with the Palestinians.
"The psychological and cultural split yawned open yesterday into a deep and perhaps total rift. The Palestinian people are mobilising for a war of independence, the Israeli public is united, at least at the moment, in a battle of survival," the Ma'ariv newspaper said.
In Petah Tikva, the hometown of one of the dead soldiers, they were even more unforgiving. "It is not just this murder, but the behaviour of the Arabs inside and outside the country," said Dr Yehuda Finkelstein. "This is not a peace process. This is part of a Palestinian project on how to destroy us and to throw us away from the Mediterranean area."
In Ramallah, where worshippers went straight from afternoon prayers to throw stones at an army checkpoint, they agreed with the Israelis on one point, at least. Peace was dead.