A SENIOR Palestinian official has accused Jewish settlers of declaring war on the Palestinians after a West Bank mosque was set on fire in what appeared to be another “price tag” attack by Jewish militants.
A mosque in the Ramallah area village of Burqa was set on fire early yesterday morning just hours after Israeli soldiers had demolished two buildings in the illegal settler outpost of Mitzpe Yitzhar.
Carpets and chairs in the mosque were destroyed before the blaze was extinguished by villagers. Slogans painted on an adjacent wall in Hebrew included “war” and “Mitzpe Yitzhar” as well as anti-Arab slogans. Police believe the incident was another “price tag” revenge attack by right-wing Jews, similar to Wednesday’s arson attack on a 12th-century Jerusalem mosque.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinian Authority held Israel responsible and he urged the international community to intervene to stop the arson attacks. “An attack on Muslim holy places is a declaration of war on the Palestinians by the settlers.”
The surge in settler violence over recent days came as the Israeli government prepared to implement a high court ruling by the end of the year to dismantle a number of illegal outposts built on West Bank Palestinian land. The outposts are populated by young militant settlers, dubbed the hilltop youth, who have vowed to resist any attempts to remove them from their homes.
The militants, traumatised by Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in the summer of 2005 and the forced removal of some 7,000 Jewish settlers, are fiercely anti-establishment and refuse to accept the authority of the mainstream settler leadership.
In response to a well-planned incident earlier this week in which a gang of 50 extremists entered a West Bank army base and attacked soldiers and vandalised army property, a number of ministers said the time had come for the government to act before soldiers were killed.
However, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejected calls to classify the hilltop youth as terrorists, terming them “anarchists”. He did authorise a series of measures against the extremists, including trying them in West Bank military courts, similar to Palestinians suspected of terrorist activity, which would expedite the judicial process and allow for more severe punishments. Detention orders and bans on entering the West Bank will also be permitted.