ISRAELI occupation troops imposed a four-day lockdown on the Palestinian West Bank yesterday for the Jewish holiday of Purim.

The military said Palestinians will be banned from entering Israel until midnight on Saturday, although the 24-hour festival ends tonight.

Exceptions will be made for humanitarian and medical cases, although ambulances are frequently stopped from crossing anyway.

The pretext for the closure is the recent wave of attacks by individual Palestinians on Israeli settlers and security forces personnel.

But Israel commonly closes off the occupied territories during Purim, claiming the street festivities are a target for terrorist attacks.

The wave of attacks followed provocative comments about the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

The stabbings, shootings and heavy-handed Israeli responses to protests in the West Bank and Gaza have left 185 Palestinians, 28 Israelis and two US tourists dead.

On Tuesday Israel banned Palestinian men aged under 50 from praying at the mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site which is administered by neighbouring Jordan, during Purim.

Zionist extremists recently called for Israelis to flock to the site during the holiday wearing fancy dress masks associated with the festival.

Meanwhile, hundreds of right-wing Israelis, including many settlers, descended on other Muslim holy sites around across the West Bank yesterday morning in “provocative” demonstrations.

In Hebron the extremists gathered at the Old City’s Ibrahimi Mosque under the heavy protection of Israeli troops, who prevented Palestinians from entering the building.

Locals told the Ma’an news agency that they used the mosque’s loudspeakers “to sing racist songs that call for the expulsion of Arab Palestinians from Hebron.”

Israeli media reported that as many as 7,000 descended on the Ibrahimi Mosque, known among Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

The site was split between the mosque and a synagogue after an Israeli settler went on a shooting rampage there in 1994, killing 29 Palestinians.

Up to 500 more settlers, again under army escort, arrived at the site of Joseph’s Tomb near Balata refugee camp east of Nablus.

Local youth threw stones at the troops, who responded with tear gas.