AN ISRAELI was shot and killed by a Palestinian policeman yesterday at the Jewish holy site Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, the West Bank’s biggest city.
The incident occurred after 15 Jews had prayed at the tomb, believed to be the burial site of the Biblical patriarch Joseph, defying an Israeli military ban on entering Palestinian-controlled areas without army permission.
Ben-Yosef Livnat (25), a father of four from Jerusalem and the nephew of Israel’s sports and culture minister Limor Livnat, was killed and four other worshippers were wounded.
Thousands attended the funeral of the victim held in Jerusalem yesterday. Ms Livnat said her nephew was killed by a “terrorist disguised as a Palestinian policeman”. She said the tomb should be under Israeli control. “It was cold-blooded murder. Ben-Yosef went to pray with other Jews, and he was murdered simply for being a Jew,” she said.
Jibril al-Bakri, the Palestinian governor of Nablus, said the main problem was that the Israelis entered the city without prior co-ordination.
An initial investigation by the Israeli army determined that the Palestinian policeman opened fire after a vehicle carrying the worshippers refused to stop at a Palestinian checkpoint.
The Israeli army did not classify the incident as a terrorist attack although Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak said there was no justification for opening fire on unarmed civilians.
Israeli police detained three of the worshippers for entering a closed military zone.
Angry Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles and homes in the area after the shooting and Israeli reinforcements were drafted to keep settlers away from Palestinian villages. Some of the most militant settlers live in hilltop communities around Nablus and they had already threatened to avenge last month’s murder of a family of five at the nearby settlement of Itamar.
Nablus came under Palestinian control in the mid-1990s as part of the Oslo peace accords but Joseph’s Tomb initially remained under Israeli control. In 2000, after a deadly clash at the site, the Palestinians assumed control of the tomb.