Clashes as Israel puts West Bank religious sites on heritage list

Israeli troops and Palestinians clashed for the fifth successive day in Hebron today, the latest fallout from an Israeli government decision to include two sites on the occupied West Bank in a new "national heritage" list.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, prayed in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron today and warned that ­Israel's new plan was a provocation.

"We will not be dragged to violence by the terrorism of the settlers, and the terrorism of the settlement project," he told reporters. "Our objection to this lies in the fact these sites are on Palestinian land that was occupied in 1967, precisely the lands upon which the independent Palestinian state will be established."

The row began at an Israeli cabinet meeting last Sunday, when ministers put together a new list of Israeli national heritage sites which needed protection and renovation. Apparently at the last minute, Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, decided to include two sites on the West Bank: the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, known to the Palestinians as the Ibrahimi mosque; and Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem.

"Our existence here in our country depends not only on the strength of the IDF [Israel Defence Force] and our economic and technological might. It is anchored, first and foremost, in our national and emotional legacy, which we instil in our youth and in the coming generations," Netanyahu told the cabinet.

However, it quickly provoked a political storm as both sites are on land captured and occupied by Israel in 1967. Both sites are important for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but there are influential Jewish settler communities close to both and Netanyahu's decision seemed a direct challenge to long-held Palestinian aspirations for an independent state.

It also seemed like a nod to the rightwing elements in his cabinet. On the same day dozens of rightwing Jewish settlers marched into the West Bank city of Jericho in a show of strength. Arieh Eldad, an Israeli MP from the rightwing National Union party, visited the Tomb of the Patriarchs and said: "There is no Israeli heritage without the Bible, there is no Zionism without the Bible. This is the real birthplace of the Jewish people, here it all began." More

The real birthplace of the jewish people:

An invention called 'the Jewish people'