Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank News of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The governor of Salfit says that settlers had previously entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army.”

Israeli settlers They set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank, while also defacing the facade of the building with hateful and racist slogans such as “Revenge” and “Death to Arabs” written in Hebrew.

Abdullah Kamel, Governor of Salfit, said on Friday that the attack targeted the Bar al-Walidin Mosque in the village of Marda, in the latest incident of settler violence.

Kamel said in a statement: “A group of settlers carried out an attack early this morning by setting fire to the mosque.”

A village resident told AFP that the settlers “set fire to the entrance to the mosque and wrote Hebrew slogans on its walls.”

Another resident said that the fire was extinguished before it engulfed the entire building.

Nasfat Al-Khafash, head of the Marda Village Council, also confirmed, in an interview with Reuters, that there had been a “systematic terrorist attack by a group of settlers.”

the Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank It is considered illegal by the United Nations and international law.

Governor Kamel said that settlers had previously entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army,” and similar acts of vandalism and graffiti had been reported in nearby areas.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Ramallah condemned the incident, describing it as a “blatant racist act” and a reflection of “widespread incitement campaigns against our people carried out by elements of the ruling far-right government” in Israel.

The Israeli police and Shin Bet security services said in a joint statement: “We see this incident as very serious and we will act decisively to bring the perpetrators to justice for a strict trial.”

The intensity of settler violence in the illegally occupied West Bank has escalated since the start of the war on Gaza on October 7 of last year. As of October 2024, there was at least 1,400 settler attacks in the West Bank.

Since the start of the war on Gaza, at least 803 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.