NABLUS (Palestine Foundation Information Center) A large number of Israeli troops aboard military vehicles, including bulldozers, stormed the eastern area of Nablus City on Sunday night and spread through its streets in order to provide protection for buses and cars carrying dozens of settlers who came for rituals at Joseph’s Tomb.
According to local sources, the Israeli bulldozers blocked Amman street near Joseph’s Tomb with mounds of dirt and rocks, while snipers were deployed in buildings around the site before settlers flocked to the mausoleum.
Palestinian resistance fighters from the Nablus Brigade reportedly opened fire at the Israeli forces and detonated explosive devices at their vehicles before the settlers managed to reach Joseph’s Tomb under military escort.
Local sources said that the IOF fired tear gas canisters intensively and bullets at young protesters, homes and journalists during the clashes that happened in different streets of eastern Nablus.
Meanwhile, dozens of settlers gathered inside the mausoleum of Joseph’s Tomb, where they danced, sang, and screamed loudly and hysterically for long hours, causing disturbance to the local residents living around it.
Israeli troops and settlers storm every week the eastern area of 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 al-Duwaik.
