HEBRON: Palestinians clashed with Israeli troops in the West

Bank town of Hebron today amid outrage over Israel’s plan to restore two flashpoint Jewish holy sites in the occupied territory.

Dozens of youths hurled rocks at an Israeli military checkpoint in the city as troops fired tear gas and stun grenades, an AFP correspondent said. A strike closed down shops and schools.

“Approximately 100 Palestinians were burning tyres and throwing rocks at IDF (Israeli military) soldiers,” an army spokeswoman said, adding that one soldier was lightly injured.

There were no reports of any Palestinians wounded, and the clashes had largely died down by the afternoon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sparked anger on Sunday when he said he hoped to include the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem in a 100-million-dollar plan to restore national heritage sites. “We strongly condemn this decision which yet again confirms the Israeli government’s determination to impose facts on the ground,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP by phone from Paris, where he was accompanying Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on an official visit.

“We call on the international community to consider this decision illegal,” he said. “This Israeli decision is provocative for Muslims around the world and especially Palestinians.”

The Islamist Hamas movement ruling the Gaza Strip also lashed out at the decision, with its tourism minister Mohammed al-Agha calling on Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank to make their way to the site and “defend” it.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the

biblical figure Abraham is believed buried, is sacred

to both Muslims and Jews and has long been the scene of tensions.

A few hundred hardline Jewish settlers under heavy Israeli military protection have taken up residence near the site and converted part of the Ibrahimi mosque above it into a synagogue.

The mosque was the site of the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers in 1994.