TEL AVIV – The IDF said three Israelis who illegally entered the West Bank Palestinian city of Nablus late Tuesday night were rescued after their car was stolen and torched.
It was not clear why the three entered the city, which is in violation of military law banning Israelis from entering Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank.
The car was stolen and set alight after the three vacated it to wander around the city.
Separately, the IDF gave special permission to some 1,000 Jewish worshipers to enter the holy site Joseph’s Tomb. Around once a month, bulletproof buses from all over the country arrive in the middle of the night to allow worshipers to spend 20 minutes by the tomb – Judaism’s third holiest site – with heavy security.
The radical B’Tselem activist group condemned the army on its Facebook page for allowing the Jewish pilgrims to visit, saying that “Israel has preferred the interest of Jewish worshipers over the rights of the Palestinian residents, their security, their safety and their daily routine.” It was not clear how Jews worshipping at a holy site impacted the security of nearby Palestinians.
Palestinian residents of Nablus have attacked the pilgrims in the past using guns, Molotov cocktails and rocks.
According to the book of Joshua, Joseph was buried outside of the city of Shechem, or Nablus. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, access to Joseph’s Tomb was supposed to be given to Jews and Christians. However, after a series of attacks against Jewish pilgrims at the holy site by gunmen affiliated with then-Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat’s militias, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered a unilateral Israeli retreat from the area in October 2000.
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