\n\tLONDON: Israeli forces conducted a raid on Solomon\u2019s Pools on Tuesday, a Palestinian-administered tourist area, following repeated calls from Israeli officials to control the site in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n
\n\tForces stormed the three reservoirs, located between the town of al-Khader and the village of Artas, south of Bethlehem. There were no arrests or injuries, the Palestine News Agency reported.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn recent weeks Israeli forces have intensified their raids on Solomon\u2019s Pools and barred Palestinian visitors from accessing the area.<\/p>\n
\n\tIsrael\u2019s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich visited the site, which dates back to the Roman era (circa 2 B.C.), in May and allocated funding to develop and preserve it. He said that it was a \u201cmistake\u201d for the site to be located in Area A, which is under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority.<\/p>\n
\n\tKnesset member and settler activist Zvi Sukkot from the Religious Zionist party visited the site last month and called for transferring control of it to the Israeli authorities.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Palestinian Authority said actions were attempts to \u201cimpose a new colonial reality\u201d and falsify the historical identity of the area. Solomon\u2019s Pools is not on the UNESCO World Heritage List.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON: Israeli forces conducted a raid on Solomon\u2019s Pools on Tuesday, a Palestinian-administered tourist area, following repeated calls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-237629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}