Those "settlers" and their "provocative prayers"

Once again, Ma'an - the most secular and professional of all Palestinian Arabic media - shows that it doesn't mean that they are professional in any absolute sense.

Here is how they describe (and have always described) the occasional visits to Joseph's Tomb by religious Israeli Jews:

More than 1,000 Israeli rightists on Sunday night visited Joseph's Tomb near Balata refugee camp east of Nablus guarded by Israeli forces, locals said.

Clashes erupted between Israeli forces and Palestinians, onlookers said Monday.

More than 30 buses carried hundreds of Israeli settlers to Nablus around 10 p.m. Sunday, alongside Israeli police and soldiers. Palestinians threw stones toward them while Israeli forces fired tear gas and stun grenades.

How do they know that the worshipers are "settlers"?(Calling them "rightists" is probably accurate but is also an assumption.) Why couldn't religious Israeli Jews from the left side of the Green Line visit a Jewish holy spot?

Of course "clashes erupted." It isn't that Israeli forces responded to rocks and Molotov cocktails with tear gas - they happened simultaneously!

As I've noted previously when Ma'an used inflammatory language, Jews have the right under existing agreements to visit Joseph's Tomb. It really should be the PA protecting them.

The Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today helpfully adds that "the settlers arrived by the dozens of buses, and they began to establish their religious rituals, and to celebrate provocatively in Joseph's Tomb." Because Jewish prayer in an unquestionably Jewish shrine is, inherently, provocative.

Because, as we've noted before, Muslims are now trying to claim the tomb for themselves. During last year's visit on the same Hebrew date, Ma'an informed us that "Muslims believe that an Islamic cleric, Sheikh Yussef (Joseph) Dawiqat, was buried there." This famous sheikh has no biography online as far as I can tell, and the earliest mention I can find of him is 2010 (that article claims that Sheikh Yusuf lived "before 1850" even though the tomb was there way before that.