The leaders of Israel and Palestine, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, are trying, separately, to contain a week-long wave of riots in West Bank cities that threatens to turn into a new Palestinian uprising. Yet the two men themselves ignited the religious passions that fuel this latest violence. And, while they now seek to control the flames, they are both still feeding them with disingenuous, incendiary statements, instead of putting them out.

Mr Netanyahu bears the primary responsibility. On February 21st he announced that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem would be listed among some 150 national heritage sites that his government proposes to refurbish.

What to Jews is the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the Biblical burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives, is to Muslims the Ibrahimi Mosque, a hallowed place of worship—Muslims venerate Abraham, too—for more than 1,000 years.

The shrine, heavily guarded by the Israeli army, has for years been a flashpoint of strife between Hebron's 160,000-strong Muslim citizens and the few hundred Jewish settlers who have made their homes near the tomb. Even the American State Department, usually loth to castigate Israel, called Mr Netanyahu's decision provocative and unhelpful.

Mr Abbas put his oar in by accusing Mr Netanyahu of inciting “religious war”. This statement was seen by youngsters on the West Bank—as he must have known it would—as a signal to take to the streets. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's Gaza-based prime minister, called on West Bankers to rise up in a new intifada. Mr Netanyahu made matters worse by accusing Mr Abbas of stirring things up with “lies and hypocrisy”. The disingenuousness of his own position—he loudly proclaimed Israel's respect for freedom of worship—was made manifest when he admitted that the shrines in Hebron and Bethlehem had not been on his original list of heritage sites but were added after pressure from his religious coalition partners.

Precedents are not encouraging. Mr Netanyahu has to his discredit violence that killed 14 Israelis and 56 Palestinians in September 1996 when, as prime minister, he permitted the opening of an underground tunnel running alongside the Western Wall, beneath the Old City of Jerusalem. Palestinian leaders further agitated things by repeating the story that the tunnel runs under the Haram al Sharif, or Temple Mount, another perennial flashpoint of religious tension. Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to that site in September 2000, and even more the lethal means employed by Israeli police in putting down the rioting that followed, triggered the al-Aqsa intifada which claimed thousands of lives.

Current combustibles are similarly ominous. In East Jerusalem, encouraged by the city's ultra-nationalist mayor, Nir Barkat, a group of religious Jewish settlers have been strong-arming their way into the Palestinian suburb of Sheikh Jarrah. Other settlers have made their homes in Silwan, another Palestinian area. Many of them are involved in a vast archaeological dig nearby that has unearthed impressive remains from the time of the Bible.

Archaeology, history, religion and politics all rub up dangerously against each other here. The Israelis seek to prove that David and Solomon and the other ancient Israelites were historical figures and not mere legend. The Palestinians accuse them of sifting out non-Israelite strata of ancient Jerusalem civilisations, and of digging as a way of extirpating present-day Palestinians from their homes.

In both of these Palestinian suburbs, the Jewish settlers can provide documents showing the houses they live in belonged to Jews before 1948, when Israel was founded and the city divided between the Jewish state and Jordan. But that jurisprudence is double-edged because Palestinians can show claim to many homes in West Jerusalem. More importantly, the forcible infiltration of Palestinian areas of the city makes—as is presumably intended—any prospect of a peaceable partition of Jerusalem less likely.