JERUSALEM, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday made a controversial visit to a flashpoint site in the West Bank city of Hebron to mark the killing of Jews there in 1929.
Netanyahu and his wife Sara visited a site holy to both Muslims, who know it as the Ibrahimi Mosque, and to Jews, who know it as the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Speaking during a state ceremony to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the killing of 67 Jews in the city, Netanyahu said that he was "proud that his government approved in 2018 a plan for building dozens of new housing units for Jewish settlers in Hebron."
"We are not foreigners in Hebron, we will stay here forever," he said.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the visit, which was Netanyahu's first official visit to the city since 1998.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the visit was "colonialist and racist," noting it comes "at the height of an election battle in an attempt to win votes from the right and the extreme right."
The longtime Israeli prime minister is on a re-election campaign ahead of Israel's general elections scheduled on Sept. 17. Such visits and remarks are being sought by his right-wing electoral base.
Some 800 Jews live in Hebron in heavily guarded enclaves, surrounded by around 200,000 Palestinians.
The city has seen regular tensions and clashes.
In 1994, a Jewish settler killed 29 Palestinians worshipers there before he was killed by survivors.
Hebron is located in the southern West Bank, a land seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel has controlled it ever since, an act condemned by the international community.
