Mr Ariel Sharon, leader of the right-wing Israeli opposition Likud party, claimed he was bringing "a message of peace" to the Temple Mount yesterday.
Palestinian leaders, however, said the visit was "a dangerous provocation". To nobody's surprise, it sparked protest and bloodshed on the disputed mount, holy to both Jews and Muslims, and in the West Bank.
Mr Sharon announced several days ago that he and his Likud colleagues intended to tour the Temple Mount, the Biblical site of the two Jewish temples and home to two mosques that mark the Prophet Muhammad's ascent to heaven. The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, warned him against the idea.
But the Likud leader was undeterred. And so, early yesterday morning, with no fewer than 1,000 Israeli policemen deployed to secure his visit, he arrived atop the mount, the disputed status of which has become the main stumbling-block to a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.
"The Temple Mount is in our hands," Mr Sharon declared at one point, echoing the radio message with which Israel's paratroop commander had announced the capture of the area in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. But, yesterday at least, the Israeli forces had to use rubber bullets to confirm their control.
Mr Sharon, the former defence minister reviled in much of the Arab world for instigating Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, was initially greeted with shouts of "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") by Palestinians who had gathered to protest against his arrival.
At the end of his visit, some of the hundreds of Palestinians who had gathered at the mosques threw rocks, bottles and chairs at policemen. Then, after police chiefs had tried to persuade the officials who administer the mosques to calm tensions, the violence worsened.
Police opened fire with rubber bullets, and 10 Palestinians and 25 police were reported injured.
Mr Faisal Husseini, Mr Arafat's top official in Jerusalem, who was reportedly hit on the head by a club, said the visit proved "to the world that the Israelis have no sovereignty here".
The clashes marked the third time in recent years that violence has flared on Temple Mount, fuelled each time by rumours about purported Israeli intentions to destroy the mosques and rebuild the Temple.
Compared to the previous confrontations, in 1990 and 1996, yesterday's violence was relatively mild and contained, echoed only in East Jerusalem and at one intersection near Ramallah in the West Bank, where four Palestinians were hurt in clashes between students and Israeli troops.
But there was one fatality yesterday. David Biri, a 19-year-old soldier who was injured on Wednesday by a roadside bomb when escorting a convoy of settlers' vehicles in the Gaza Strip, died of his injuries. The bomb was presumably planted by Palestinian militants, but no group has taken responsibility.