Shortly before midnight on Friday morning residents of the Salfit-district village of Kifl Haris reported dozens of Israeli military vehicles and bus-loads of what were described by locals as "settlers" entering the area.Similarly, when Jews want to visit Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus), they are forced to also come in the middle of the night, limited to once a month, in armored buses that get stoned by local residents.
Locals estimated some 3,000 "settlers" - religious Jews, many from settlements in the occupied West Bank - entered the area as protecting troops set up checkpoints and barricades around a small tomb in the village.
Locals say the tomb belongs to a sheikh from the village, while religious Jews visiting the site say it is the final resting place of Joshua ben Nun, leader of early Jewish tribes.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said there were 800 visitors accompanied by Israeli soldiers. The group stayed in the area from midnight to 5 a.m.
According to Israeli news site Ynet, the visitors found the tomb "desecrated" by Arabic graffiti with slogans like "we are the defenders of the national project" and "conciliation, speak to you enemy through bullets."
If a two-state "solution" should ever materialize, this is what "free access to religious shrines" would look like. The very best scenario that the Palestinian Arab leaders would allow would be that Jews visiting the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem would also come once a month or so, in the dead of night, to visit their holy places. (If it was up to the PA, this is how they would let Jews visit the Kotel/Western Wall as well. And, of course, Jews would never be allowed to the Temple Mount.)
It would actually be worse, because the IDF would not be able to defend Jews wanting to visit their shrines in "Palestine," so the Jews would be at the mercy of the Palestinian Arab police's whims as far as when or if they could ever visit.
This is what the world is demanding for "peace" - ripping out all Jewish access to Jewish heritage and historic sites. Soothing words about how a peace agreement would allow free access to religious shrines would become quickly as meaningless as they became when Jordan took over the West Bank in 1949 (ironically violating the same UN Resolution 194 that Palestinian Arabs now claim as giving them the fake "right to return.")