Palestinians torch Joseph’s Tomb ahead of ‘rage’ day

At one point, shouts were heard, followed by several gunshots.

Soldiers ran over and gave aid to the injured soldier, who was eventually taken away by ambulance.

Friday’s stabbing “marks a worrying development”, the group said, urging that media operate with heightened caution in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The foreign press association in Israel and the Palestinian territories said it deplored the attack and called on Palestinian media organizations to verify all staff credentials. “They were very angry and wanted to attack the soldiers”, he said of the stone-throwers, majority teens.

Palestinians set fire to a West Bank shrine holy to Jews, drawing sharp condemnation on Friday not only from Israel but from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been heavily criticized for failing to denounce a recent spate of stabbing attacks by Palestinians against Israelis. Flames blackened exterior walls of the small stone structure, a scene of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the past.

Protests have erupted repeatedly along the Israel-Gaza border in recent weeks, as part of the upswing in violence during this period.

Seven Israelis have been killed and dozens wounded.

Eight Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks over the last month, the majority of them as a result of stabbings.

Reuters television footage showed the Palestinian rolling on the ground and surrounded by Israeli troops after the attack.

Most of the attacks on Israelis were carried out by Palestinians with no known ties to militant groups.

The violence comes at a time when a possible partition of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into two states – Palestine alongside Israel – is fading.

In response to the stabbings, Israel has taken unprecedented measures, including setting up checkpoints in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem this week despite Israel’s long-standing assertion that the city is united. One man died in Gaza on Friday from wounds sustained in a clash a week ago. Men under 40 were barred from the shrine, and hundreds of young worshippers spread out prayer mats on streets leading to the Old City.

The tomb is revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of Joseph, son of Jacob. “The Palestinian leadership is still interested in keeping the current protests peaceful and non-violent, but if Israel continues in its use of lethal weapons and disproportioned use of force, this non-violent Palestinian protest can be turned into a violent struggle against Israel, like a snowball which can become very flammable in the future”.

The Palestinian representative to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, has accused Israeli security forces of escorting Jewish hardliners onto the Temple Mount and into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Taye-Brook Zerihoun, the assistant secretary-general for political affairs, told an emergency Security Council meeting on Friday that this “stark reality” has been compounded by increasingly dire economic conditions, including bleak employment prospects for Palestinian youths, and expanding Israeli settlement activities. In that time, 31 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including 14 labeled by Israel as attackers, and the rest in clashes with Israeli troops.

The overnight firebomb attack damaged part of the complex that devout Jews believe houses the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph, outside the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

The IDF said Palestinian attackers have wielded knifes against Israeli civilians and authorities, and Israeli security forces have turned their guns on them.

IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said: “The burning and desecration of Joseph’s Tomb last night is a blatant violation and contradiction of the basic value of freedom of worship”.