Highway 1 to Jerusalem was shut down on Saturday evening a mere hour after it was reopened to buses and taxis.

The Ministry of Transportation decided that using the road was too risky because of icing conditions.

The tunnel road connecting Gush Etzion to Jerusalem has been shut down too.

Snow began falling shortly before midnight in Gush Etzion, which includes some hills higher than all other locations south of Tzfat (Safed). Snow also was reported in Kiryat Arba, and 10 snow plows are on standby Jerusalem is expected to be covered with white in the morning.

The snow is expected to reach the southern Hevron Hills and the Central Negev by Friday. Heavy snow has been falling all on the Hermon all day, and 3-6 feet is forecast to cover the upper ski slopes.

Heavy rains, accompanied with high winds, have drenched Israel from the northern border to south of Be’er Sheva. Two inches of rain fell in Jerusalem in eight hours on Wednesday, bringing the amount of precipitation for this time of year well above average.

Naftali Bennett, chairman of the Jewish Home party and a key government coalition partner, has publicly proposed that Israel annexing Maaleh Adumim, Gush Etzion and other areas in Judea and Samaria where there are large Jewish population centers.

“I favor implementation of Israeli sovereignty over the zone where 400,000 [settlers] live and only 70,000 Arabs,” Bennett, who also is Minister of Economy, said on Israeli radio Sunday. His numbers are way off the mark, unless he was including approximately 250,000 Jews who live in areas of Jerusalem that have been under Israeli sovereignty since 1980. The United States and the United Nations still refer to them as “settlements.”

Bennett did not refer to any specific communities, but Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Beitar Illit, Efrat and neighboring communities in Gush Etzion, and the city of Ariel are home to approximately 150,000 Jews, about half of those living in Judea and Samaria.

Even talking about annexing parts of Judea and Samaria could be enough to scuttle U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s “Peace Talk Road Show,” which played another round last week.

Kerry left Israel with triumphant statements, such as “I believe we are closer than we have been in years to bringing about the peace and the prosperity and the security that all of the people of this region deserve.”

Bennett could not have been more negative about Kerry’s cheerleading.

“This is all a joke. It’s as if we’re discussing the purchase of a car with only half of its owners,” Bennett said Sunday.

Add to that juicy comments by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and then ask if Kerry knows what is going in the Israeli government, or ask if chief negotiator is preparing to blow up the whole works by destroying the coalition.

Lieberman told the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington Friday, “Today the trust between the two sides is about zero. It’s impossible to create peace if you don’t have any credibility. I don’t believe it is possible in the next year… to achieve a comprehensive solution to achieve some breakthrough but I think it is crucial to keep our dialogue.”

Ya’alon told the annual Globes Business Conference Saturday night, “As someone who supported Oslo [Accords], I’m learning that on the other side we have no partner for two states for two people. There is no one on the other side, and hasn’t been since the dawn of Zionism, a leadership that is prepared to recognize our right to exist as a nation-state for the Jewish nation, and to recognize an agreement as the end of the conflict and the end to demands.”

The Palestinian Authority for years has been trying to destroy evidence of the existence of the Holy Temples, and new fears have arisen that they may try to the same in a Gush Etzion location of artifacts from the Hashmonean Dynasty, when the Miracle of Hanukkah occurred.

Artifacts and remnants of a fortress dating back to the period are located at the site that is being excavated near Bethlehem in an area where Israelis have not officiallyvisited for 20 years due to restrictions written in the Oslo Accords.

The Kfar Etzion Field School received special permission to visit the archaeological site and discovered that the Palestinian Authority has been organizing digs there, leading to fears that artifacts will be lost forever. A large fortress was uncovered at the site in the 1980s, and archaeologists have said it was built after the battle in which Judah the Maccabee was killed.

Palestinian Authority terrorists threw rocks and a firebomb at Jewish motorists in at least two locations in Judea and Samaria Tuesday, but they also widened their activities to include a PA official, whose empty car was riddled with bullets.

Abu Zaida, a senior official for Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, said that shortly after he parked his car and left it, gunmen shot sprayed it with gunfire, leaving approximately 20 holes in the car.

Attacks on Jews continued unabated and unreported by most media. Cars driven by Jews were damaged by rocks in the Binyamin region of Samaria, while a firebomb was hurled at a Jewish vehicle on Highway 60 between Gush Etzion and Jerusalem.

A mob of dozens of Palestinian Authority rock-throwers injured five Jews on the road from Tekoa, in eastern Gush Etzion, to Jerusalem Tuesday morning. At least one of the victims was evacuated by ambulance, and his condition was described as good.

The mob, which included women and children, smashed windshields with large rocks in an effort to cause fatal accidents. Six cars sustained damage.

One driver said he lost control of his vehicle but managed to keep from crashing and from hitting the attackers.

Israeli soldiers arrived at the scene and dispersed the attackers.

A mezuzah placed on an abandoned IDF building in the Shdema area of eastern Gush Etzion served as a victory sign for the Women in Green, who have struggled for five years to keep Arabs from occupying it and separating Jewish contiguity in the future.

The building now will serve as a cultural center, after having been abandoned in 2006 and later virtually destroyed and looted by Palestinian Authority Arabs.

Two years later, when Ehud Barak was Defense Minister, the IDF planned to give the land to the Palestinian Authority even though it is “Area C,” which under the Oslo Accords includes Jewish and Arab communities and villages that are supposed to be under complete Israeli sovereignty.

The nationalist Women in Green organized what appeared to be hopeless protests to keep the land from falling into Arab hands. They pressured the army to return to the Shedma base in 2010, and after renovations, a mezuzah was affixed to the doorpost of the building on Friday in the presence of the Deputy Minister of Religious Services Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan.

“Shdema will be a flourishing community. There will be no other sovereignty in Eretz Israel other than that of the State of Israel,” he said.

Yehudit Katsover, who along with and Nadia Matar leads the Women in Green, read a congratulatory letter by Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein, who wrote, “The Gush Etzion area has an abundant history of special women who ‘built the House of Israel.’ On one side, standing on the main road, is the tomb of the Matriarch Rachel, who weeps and ‘refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone.’

“And on the other side stands Shdema, which connects Jerusalem and Tekoa, the place of the woman of Tekoa who acts on behalf of the unity of the people, ‘that the one who is banished be not an outcast from him.’ Israel is redeemed by the merit of righteous women, and by the merit of tenacious and fighting women, who are persistent and experienced in struggles… Shdema will yet develop and become an important and central settlement point.”

Gush Etzion Regional Council head Davidi Perl also vowed that Shdema “will be a permanent settlement.”

The Women in Green and their supporters have struggled against leftists, both Israelis and foreigners, who have encouraged Arabs to try to take over the land. The women frequently planted trees, even after Arabs uprooted them.

Attorney Herzl Yehezkel, who during his term in office as head of the Homat Shmuel (Har Homah) Community Administration worked with the women, said the effort to prevent the transfer of Shedma to Arabs “proves that determination is successful, and there is no reason not to settle everywhere.”

There has been an escalation of Arab attacks all week long, but since early Friday afternoon, Arabs have been violently rioting throughout Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem following Arab calls for violent demonstrations.

Dozens of attacks have been reported today, here is a partial roundup of some of the attacks:

Local Mount of Olive residents were told to bring in their Sukkahs overnight, after they received advance warning that Arabs were planning to burn down their Sukkahs on Friday with firebombs.

Hundred of Arabs were stoning Jews with cinder-blocks and stones on the road leading to the Mount of Olives neighborhoods.

Undercover police officers managed to identify and apprehend the ringleaders of the riot, and dispersed the remaining Arab hooligans.

From Tazpit News Agency:

Approximately 100 Arabs are rioting near Kever Rachel.

Two pipe bombs were thrown near Kever Rachel.

Near Sha’ar Shechem (Damascus Gate) in Jerusalem, a policeman was lightly injured by Arab rock throwers.

A soldier was injured near Beit Omar from stone throwing. His teeth were broken when a stone hit him in the face.

Near Assawiyah in Jerusalem, Arabs are throwing stones and burning tires.

Arab are throwing stones at Beit Hadassah in Hebron.

Arabs are burning an agricultural field near Hebron.

Arabs are rioting near Shechem.

Arabs threw stones at cars near Efrat in Gush Etzion.

A firebomb was thrown at IDF troops near Beit Omar.

On road 60, between Gush Etzion and Hebron, Arabs are throwing stones at cars and policemen.

Arabs lit up a tire between Beit Fa’jar and Migdal Oz in Gush Etzion.

Violent riots have been reported near Ne’elin. One person was injured.