{"id":2001,"date":"2010-02-22T17:23:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T17:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines.php"},"modified":"2010-02-22T17:23:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T17:23:27","slug":"israel-adds-west-bank-shrines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines","title":{"rendered":"Israel Adds West Bank Shrines to Protected Sites List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM (RNS) A decision to include two West Bank shrines in a list of Jewish heritage sites slated for preservation has been praised by religious and right-wing Jews and scorned by Palestinians and their supporters.<br \/>\nSpeaking at a Sunday (Feb. 21) cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would add Rachel&#8217;s Tomb and The Tomb of the Patriarchs to the list of dozens of heritage sites he unveiled last week. Netanyahu has pledged more than $100 million to revitalize Jewish heritage sites and build an historical trail linking them.<br \/>\nIsraeli media said Netanyahu took the step after religious members of his government blasted the sites&#8217; exclusion.<br \/>\nRachel&#8217;s Tomb is the traditional burial place of the biblical matriarch Rachel. It is located just inside Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem, next to Jerusalem.<br \/>\nThe Tomb of the Patriarchs, located in the even more volatile West Bank city of Hebron, about 20 miles south of Jerusalem, is believed to contain the remains of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. The second holiest site in Judaism, it is also sacred to Muslims, who call it Al-Haran Al Ibrahimi.<br \/>\nHebron is home to several hundred Jewish settlers and more than 160,000 Palestinians who often clash, resulting in decades of violence.<br \/>\nIn 1929, Arabs murdered 67 Jews in Hebron, and in 1994, Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at prayer at the Patriarchs tomb.<br \/>\nThe West Bank, part of the biblical land of Israel, is home to many places that are holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Israel captured the territory, as well as East Jerusalem and Gaza, during the 1967 Middle East War.<br \/>\nPalestinians, who want these territories to form the basis of a future state, insist that Netanyahu included the tombs in order to thwart Palestinian sovereignty.<br \/>\n&#8220;This particular violation is especially dangerous because it will add to the religious component of the conflict in a way that might bring dangerous consequences,&#8221; Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian government spokesman, told the Jerusalem Post.<br \/>\nThe New York-based Orthodox Union, meanwhile, commended Netanyahu for his move, saying, &#8220;While some continue to wage a campaign to deny and obscure the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel &#8230; Nowhere is that Jewish connection more obvious than these two biblical sites.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>By Michele Chabin<br \/>\nCopyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM (RNS) A decision to include two West Bank shrines in a list of Jewish heritage sites slated for preservation has been praised by religious and right-wing Jews and scorned by Palestinians and their supporters. Speaking at a Sunday (Feb. 21) cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would add Rachel&#8217;s Tomb and The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Israel Adds West Bank Shrines to Protected Sites List<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Israel Adds West Bank Shrines to Protected Sites List\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"JERUSALEM (RNS) A decision to include two West Bank shrines in a list of Jewish heritage sites slated for preservation has been praised by religious and right-wing Jews and scorned by Palestinians and their supporters. Speaking at a Sunday (Feb. 21) cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would add Rachel&#8217;s Tomb and The&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-02-22T17:23:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Israel Adds West Bank Shrines to Protected Sites List","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Israel Adds West Bank Shrines to Protected Sites List","og_description":"JERUSALEM (RNS) A decision to include two West Bank shrines in a list of Jewish heritage sites slated for preservation has been praised by religious and right-wing Jews and scorned by Palestinians and their supporters. Speaking at a Sunday (Feb. 21) cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would add Rachel&#8217;s Tomb and The&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-02-22T17:23:27+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines","name":"Israel Adds West Bank Shrines to Protected Sites List","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-02-22T17:23:27+00:00","dateModified":"2010-02-22T17:23:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/02\/israel-adds-west-bank-shrines#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Israel Adds West Bank Shrines to Protected Sites List"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}