Clashes Reported after Israeli Shot by Police in West Bank

Local Editor

A Palestinian policeman shot dead an Israeli and wounded four others after they entered a holy site in a West Bank city without permission on Sunday, the Israeli military said. The group, described by a security official from an Israeli settlement near the scene as Jewish worshippers, was shot at Joseph's Tomb, which some Jews believe to be the burial place of the biblical patriarch, in the Palestinian city of Nablus.

"An Israeli civilian was killed and four others injured after entering Joseph's Tomb in Nablus un-permitted," the Israeli enemy military said in a statement in English. The military said it had been notified by Palestinian officials that "the civilians were shot by a Palestinian policeman who, after identifying suspicious movements, fired in their direction." Israeli and Palestinian security officials would meet to investigate the shooting, the statement said.

The governor of Nablus, Jibreen al-Bakri, said the group of Israelis had entered the area without coordinating it with the Palestinian Authority, as is the understanding with Israel. "We have detained the forces responsible for securing the area and are investigating what happened," Bakri told Reuters.

Meanwhile, Israeli daily Haaretz reported that thousands of masked Israelis youth clashed with Palestinian in the West Bank village of Hawara on Sunday. The Israelis approached the village and began throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles, lightly wounding a child, the Israeli daily said. The angry youth torched a car and tried to burn down a house, but were stopped after large security forces were deployed in the area, it added.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday that there was no excuse that could justify what he called the Palestinian security forces' fatal use of live fire against the Israelis who entered Joseph's Tomb without authorization. "No problem of coordination can justify an incident like this and the shooting of innocent people," Barak said, calling the incident no less than "murder".

A spokesman of the West Bank settlement council declared that Israel could not let the shooting of its citizens by Palestinian security forces pass silently. "The recent murders of Jews were the result of incitement by the Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of Abu Mazen, but this is a murder carried out by the Authority itself, exactly like in the days of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat," said the spokesman of the Yesha Council of Settlements. "The defensive wall built by the Israeli army nine years ago has cracked once again, this time from bullets fire by those who want to be given a state," added the spokesman.

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