Palestinian Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the Palestinian Minister of Religious Affairs, said the PA “rejects the Israeli plan to organize school trips to Al-Ibrahimi Mosque.”

Al-Habbash said that the mosque "is a pure Islamic endowment and right."

The holy place is also sacred to Christians and Jews. It is believed that Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah are buried there.

On Wednesday, Sa’ar announced that starting in the upcoming school year, his ministry will make student trips to the mosque in Hebron part of a new curriculum. Sa’ar said the move is to emphasize to students a historic connection with a place in which Jews have lived throughout the generations.

The minister said he wanted the youth to know as much about their history as they know about reality television programs.

Al-Habbash said that "Israel seeks to forge the history of Hebron." He added that it "will not succeed in adding Palestinian Islamic religious and heritage sites to its alleged legacy."

In February, the Israeli government approved a call by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to add the shrine to Israel's national list of heritage, sparking fierce reactions by the PA, Muslim and Arab world.

For his part, the former Israeli education minister said that Sa’ar questioned if Sa’ar can take the Israeli students to the shrine without “showing them the price paid by Palestinians in Hebron.”

According to Rubinstein, it was very bad for an education minister to involve himself in matters such as field trips, and that there were managers and department heads closely engaged with schools and their principals on such issues.

Uri Avnery, a former Israeli Knesset member and Gush Shalom founder said that “Gideon Sa’ar has ceased to be the minister of education and turned into Israel’s minister of propaganda, aiming to instill an extreme right-wing ideology” into Israel’s school system.

Avnery added that “every year we hear the heartrending stories of pupils whose parents can’t afford the required fee and therefore can’t participate in school trips with their classmates, and feel ashamed and humiliated.”

“Instead of helping these cases”, Avnery said, “minister Sa’ar is opening the public treasury wide to finance trips that are nothing but a political provocation in the service of the settlers.”

The leftist Israeli daily Haaretz said that the plan “is cause for serious concern.”

Haaretz said in its editorial that Sa’ar “took a controversial political step — not a pedagogic one — in his decision to bring schoolchildren to the heart of the most violent and problematic settlement in the territories.”