Over 2000 Israeli settlers at dawn Monday stormed Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and performed Talmudic rituals under military protection Maariv said.
Maariv said that the Palestinian citizens hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli forces and the buses transporting the Israeli settlers to Joseph’s Tomb.
Palestinian eyewitnesses said that violent clashes broke out at daybreak in the eastern area of Nablus following a settler break-in into Joseph’s Tomb.
A Palestinian young man was injured by Israeli gunfire in the thigh and was transferred to hospital for treatment.
Israeli forces and settlers on a regular basis raid Nablus to perform rituals at the tomb which they claim to be the resting-place of the biblical patriarch Joseph while locals and Palestinian historians affirm that the grave belongs to a local medieval Muslim Sheikh called Yousef Duwaikat.
Over the past years Joseph’s Tomb has witnessed bloody confrontations in which Israeli soldiers and Palestinians were killed especially in 1996 when Palestinian national security forces clashed with Israeli soldiers.
At the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000 violent clashes broke out in the area between the Palestinians and the Israeli army resulting in deaths on both sides which forced the Israeli army to withdraw from the shrine.
