Israel’s president celebrated the start of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah at a controversial spot in the occupied West Bank, sparking criticism from Palestinians and left-leaning Israelis, reports the AP. President Isaac Herzog visited the second holiest site in Judaism, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, revered as the burial site of the Biblical Abraham. The city has been the site of repeated clashes between Jewish settlers and Palestinian residents and in 1994, a settler massacred 29 Muslims at the cave. At the ceremony—in which the president called for “peace between all religions” and an end to “all forms of hatred and violence”—Herzog made no mention of the ‘94 slaughter but paid tribute to 60 Jews killed by Palestinians in the city in 1929. Hussein Al Sheikh, a top Palestinian authority, called Herzog’s visit a “political, moral, and religious provocation.” Israeli activists also opposed the visit, including a group of former Israeli combat soldiers who stand against the occupation of the West Bank; they accused Herzog of “giving an official seal of approval to this obscene reality and the people perpetuating it.”