Joseph’s Tomb In West Bank City Set On Fire

“IDF will bring perpetrators to justice, restore the site & ensure that freedom of worship returns to Josephs Tomb”, IDF spokesman Peter Lerner tweeted.

As CNN explains, Nablus is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and the tomb is venerated by Jews.

The site, where Jews go to pray, was badly damaged.

It happened just yards from where a group of Palestinians were involved in clashes with Israeli security forces.

In further violence, an Israeli soldier was wounded in a stabbing attack near Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement in Hebron, by a Palestinian disguised as a journalist.

Three more Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in clashes between stone-throwers and Israeli troops in several West Bank towns and on the Israel-Gaza border, Palestinian medics said.

Riyad Mansour told an emergency council meeting Friday called by Arab states that the issue of protection “has become more urgent than any time before” because of what he described as Israeli aggression “against our defenseless Palestinian people”.

The Israelis were killed in random attacks in the street or on buses. “This latest wave of terror is the predictable outcome of the vitriolic anti-Jewish rhetoric that bombards Palestinians on a daily basis – nothing else”, said Gary L. Bauer, Washington director of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund.

The arson comes at a time of heightened tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

Reuters television footage showed the Palestinian rolling on the ground and surrounded by Israeli troops after the attack. Soldiers rushed to the scene, administering aid to the injured soldier who was eventually taken away by ambulance.

The journalists who witnessed Friday’s incident said the assailant, later identified as Eyad Awawdeh, had read the Quran, the Muslim holy book, before the confrontations began. The Foreign Press Association for Israel and the Palestinian territories said it “marks a worrying development” that demands all media operate with greater caution.

“We absolutely reject such acts and any acts outside the law and order and that are offensive to our culture and our religion and our morals”, Abbas said in a statement published by WAFA, the Palestinian news agency.

The attacker’s name has not been released, but local journalists said they did not know him.

Israeli soldiers fired large canisters of gas and fired live ammunition at Palestinians civilians who gathered at the border of Al-Bureij in the Gaza Strip on Friday. One man died in Gaza on Friday from wounds sustained in a clash a week ago. Known as Haram Al-Sharif or the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, it’s also one of the holiest sites in Islam.

This attack came shortly after Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu called for a stop to a recent string of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.