By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent    
Fearing possible developments in Israel's talks with the Palestinians over control in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox leaders have urged the Haredi public to stage a mass protest Thursday against dividing the capital.
The gathering is scheduled to take place at the Old City's Ramban Synagogue. It is being organized by the Chief Rabbi of the Old City, Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl, and Rabbi Eliyahu Medina.
The leader of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, joined the call for protest under the slogan "Over Jerusalem they cast lots," urging the public to rally at a demonstration against the government's diplomatic platform.  
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government is currently negotiating with the PA over final-status issues ahead of a peace conference scheduled for late November in the United States. Vice Premier Haim Ramon recently announced a plan to transfer the city's Arab neighborhoods to Palestinian control, effectively partitioning the capital.
On the eve of Sukkot earlier this month, just before his death, former chief rabbi Avraham Shapira protested the plan to transfer Jewish holy places to foreign control.
"The Land of Israel belongs to the Nation of Israel and was granted to us as an inheritance by the Creator of the World. Neither the prime minister nor anybody else has the right to give away areas, or even a grain of sand, of the Holy Land of Israel," Shapira wrote. He signed the document along with former Sephardic chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu.
Both Shapira and Eliyahu signed the declaration at the request of MK Uri Yehuda Ariel from the National Union-National Religious Party.
Right-wing groups and Haredis sharply criticized comments made by an aide to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas who demanded Palestinian control over the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City.
MK Effi Eitam (National Union-National Religious Party) called on Jews across the world to speak out against an attempt to interfere with the Jewish connection to the Western Wall and Jerusalem.
"Jews who wish to visit the Western Wall will have to travel there in an armored vehicle, and will be exposed to sniper fire from the Old City's rooftops as Jerusalem residents were before the unification [in 1967]," Eitam said.
Likud MK Yuli Edelstein also criticized the government over Jerusalem. He said ministers' statements about a readiness to make concessions over the capital and the Jewish people's holiest places only serve to increase the Palestinians' demands and raise their expectations.
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