Hebron, February 22: Palestinians clashed Monday with Israeli troops in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank town of Hebron amid outrage over an Israeli plan to “restore” two flashpoint holy sites in the Palestinian territory.
Dozens of youths hurled rocks at an Israeli military checkpoint in the city as troops fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets, a media correspondent said. Shops and schools shut down as a strike was declared.
On Sunday hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped to include the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem in a 100 million dollar plan to restore national heritage sites.
The sites are holy to Muslims and Jews, but the move is seen as further imposing illegal Israeli control of the Palestinian 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 said by phone from Paris, where he is accompanying Palestinian president Mahmud 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.
Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, who heads Palestinian Islamic courts, said the decision “amounts to a declaration of war against the Islamic holy sites in Palestine.”
“The practices of the Israeli occupation and its actions against the holy sites violate divine laws and international ones,” he added in a statement.
A few hundred extremist 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.
More than 160,000 Palestinians live in Hebron, from which the Israeli military partially withdrew in 1998.
The decision to include the two sites in the plan was made at the last minute following protests from right-wing ministers. A government spokesman insisted Sunday that the list of some 150 sites was not final.
Meanwhile, a group of Jewish extremists forced their way past an army checkpoint and into the West Bank town of Jericho on Sunday to pray at an ancient synagogue and were later arrested, the Israeli army said.
Earlier, a media correspondent said the group, of radical settlers, broke through a military checkpoint on one of the roads controlling access to Jericho.
Israelis wishing to pray there are supposed to coordinate with the Israeli army.
—Agencies