The governor of Salfit says the settlers had previously entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army.”
Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank while defacing the building’s facade with hateful and racist slogans such as “Revenge” and “Death to Arabs” spray-painted in Hebrew.
Abdallah Kamil, the governor of Salfit, said on Friday that the attack targeted the Bar al-Walidain mosque in Marda village, marking the latest incident of settler violence.
“A group of settlers carried out an attack this morning by setting fire to the mosque,” Kamil said in a statement.
A resident of the village told AFP that the settlers “set fire to the entrance to the mosque and wrote Hebrew slogans on the walls.”
Another resident said the fire was extinguished before it could engulf the entire building.
Nasfat al-Khufash, chairman of the Marda village council, also confirmed the “systematic terrorist attack by a group of settlers” in an interview with the Reuters news agency.
The Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal by the United Nations and under international law.
Governor Kamil said that settlers had previously entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army” and that similar acts of vandalism and graffiti had been reported in surrounding areas.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Ramallah condemned the incident, calling it a “blatant act of racism” and a reflection of the “widespread smear campaigns against our people carried out by elements of Israel’s far-right ruling government.”
Israel police and Shin Bet security services said in a joint statement: “We consider this incident to be extremely serious and will act decisively to bring the perpetrators to justice and subject them to a rigorous trial.”
Settler violence in the illegally occupied West Bank has increased since the war in Gaza began on October 7 last year. There was at least until October 2024 1,400 settler attacks in the West Bank.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 803 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers since the start of the war on Gaza.
