AL-BIREH – A mosque in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Al-Bireh was damaged by fire and Hebrew-language graffiti on Monday, in a pre-dawn attack that Palestinians blamed on Zionist settlers.
AFP journalists who arrived at the scene found fire damage at the entrance to the building and in a washroom, and spray-painted slogans in Hebrew reading, "Siege on Arabs and not on Jews”, and "The land of Israel for my people!”
They said the damage was light and the prayer area was unharmed.
The incident bore the hallmarks of a "price tag” attack -- a euphemism for Zionist hate crimes that generally target Palestinian or Arab property.
"Residents were surprised during the night by a fire in the mosque and rushed to put it out,” Al-Bireh Mayor Azzam Ismail told AFP, blaming "Israeli settlers”.
Speaking ahead of a weekly Palestinian cabinet meeting, prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh called the attack a "racist act” and said he held the occupying regime responsible for "the increasing violence of the settlers”.
"This is a criminal and racist act, and we hold the Occupation (Zionist regime) authorities fully responsible for the assault and the rising level of Israeli settler violence [against Palestinians],” he said.
Palestinian sources, requesting anonymity, said the extremists stormed the city of al-Bireh, located 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) north of al-Quds, in the early hours of Monday and scribbled racial slogans against Arabs and Muslims on the walls of the mosque, before setting parts of it on fire.
Local residents rushed to the site once they took notice of the fire, and managed to extinguish it before it could sweep through the whole building.
The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs denounced the arson attack in a statement, saying it exposes the racist nature of the Zionist regime. It further accused the occupying regime’s authorities of supporting settler groups as they press ahead with their price tag attacks.
Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates also censured the attack.
"The Ministry, while seriously following up cases of settlers’ attacks on places of worship, holds the Israeli regime and its prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] fully and directly responsible for the latest attack,” it said in a statement.
Moreover, the secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Saeb Erekat, decried the arson attack as an act rooted in "racism and apartheid.”
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
All Zionist settlements are illegal under international law.
According to human rights groups, incidents of sabotage and violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians and their property are a daily occurrence throughout the West Bank.
AFP journalists who arrived at the scene found fire damage at the entrance to the building and in a washroom, and spray-painted slogans in Hebrew reading, "Siege on Arabs and not on Jews”, and "The land of Israel for my people!”
They said the damage was light and the prayer area was unharmed.
The incident bore the hallmarks of a "price tag” attack -- a euphemism for Zionist hate crimes that generally target Palestinian or Arab property.
"Residents were surprised during the night by a fire in the mosque and rushed to put it out,” Al-Bireh Mayor Azzam Ismail told AFP, blaming "Israeli settlers”.
Speaking ahead of a weekly Palestinian cabinet meeting, prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh called the attack a "racist act” and said he held the occupying regime responsible for "the increasing violence of the settlers”.
"This is a criminal and racist act, and we hold the Occupation (Zionist regime) authorities fully responsible for the assault and the rising level of Israeli settler violence [against Palestinians],” he said.
Palestinian sources, requesting anonymity, said the extremists stormed the city of al-Bireh, located 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) north of al-Quds, in the early hours of Monday and scribbled racial slogans against Arabs and Muslims on the walls of the mosque, before setting parts of it on fire.
Local residents rushed to the site once they took notice of the fire, and managed to extinguish it before it could sweep through the whole building.
The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs denounced the arson attack in a statement, saying it exposes the racist nature of the Zionist regime. It further accused the occupying regime’s authorities of supporting settler groups as they press ahead with their price tag attacks.
Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates also censured the attack.
"The Ministry, while seriously following up cases of settlers’ attacks on places of worship, holds the Israeli regime and its prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] fully and directly responsible for the latest attack,” it said in a statement.
Moreover, the secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Saeb Erekat, decried the arson attack as an act rooted in "racism and apartheid.”
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
All Zionist settlements are illegal under international law.
According to human rights groups, incidents of sabotage and violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians and their property are a daily occurrence throughout the West Bank.
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