Palestinians clashed with Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Hebron on Monday amid outrage over Israel’s plan to restore two flashpoint Jewish holy sites in the occupied territory.
Dozens of youths hurled rocks at an Israeli military checkpoint in the city as troops fired tear gas and stun grenades, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent said. A strike closed down shops and schools.
“Approximately 100 Palestinians were burning tyres and throwing rocks at IDF [Israeli military] soldiers,” an army spokesperson said, adding that one soldier was lightly injured.
There were no reports of any Palestinians wounded, and the clashes had largely died down by the afternoon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sparked anger on Sunday when he said he hoped to include the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem in a $100-million plan to restore national heritage sites.
“We strongly condemn this decision which yet again confirms the Israeli government’s determination to impose facts on the ground,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP by phone from Paris, where he was accompanying Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on an official visit.
“We call on the international community to consider this decision illegal,” he said. “This Israeli decision is provocative for Muslims around the world and especially Palestinians.”
Biblical figure
The Islamist Hamas movement ruling the Gaza Strip also lashed out at the decision, with its Tourism Minister, Mohammed al-Agha, calling on Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank to make their way to the site and “defend” it.
The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the biblical figure Abraham is believed buried, is sacred to both Muslims and Jews and has long been the scene of tensions.
A few hundred hard-line Jewish settlers under heavy Israeli military protection have taken up residence near the site and converted part of the Ibrahimi mosque above it into a synagogue.
The mosque was the site of the infamous massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers in 1994 by Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein, who was himself later killed by Palestinians who had survived the shooting.
More than 160 000 Palestinians live in Hebron, from which the Israeli military partially withdrew in 1998.
The tomb of the Jewish matriarch Rachel is in an Israeli enclave in the West Bank town of Bethlehem surrounded by 8m-high concrete walls.
The decision to include the two sites in the plan was made at the last minute following protests from right-wing ministers. A government spokesperson insisted on Sunday that the list of about 150 sites was not final.
Peace talks have been suspended for more than a year over the issue of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, including mostly Arab east Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967 in a move not recognised internationally.
The Palestinians have demanded a complete settlement freeze before returning to negotiations, but Israel has only agreed to a temporary easing of growth that excludes east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians view as their future capital. — AFP