BEIT FAJJAR, West Bank (Reuters) – Jewish settlers opposed to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians were accused of setting fire to a mosque in the West Bank yesterday, burning the Koran and scrawling threats in Hebrew on its walls.
“Mosques, we burn,” said a warning scribbled at the door of the smoke-smudged mosque of Beit Fajjar south of Bethlehem on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed for cool heads to avert the collapse of US-brokered peace talks.
The green-carpeted floor of the mosque was burnt to a black crust in a dozen places where it was doused with kerosene and set alight at around three in the morning. A dozen copies of the Koran were scorched by the fire.
Palestinians said settlers were behind the attack.
“The settlers’ message is: terrorise the Palestinian people,” said Mohammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who came to inspect the damage and talk to the locals.
“Crimes like these do not terrorise the Palestinian people. On the contrary, such attacks will only embolden the Palestinian people and increase our determination to achieve all of our rights,” he told Reuters after delivering a brief sermon.
Netanyahu denounced the attack and told Israel’s security forces to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Violence could complicate US-led efforts to prevent the collapse of Middle East peace talks launched just a month ago. They were plunged into crisis last week when a 10-month Israeli moratorium on building new houses in West Bank Jewish settlements expired.
Beit Fajjar is a dusty, jumbled village of stone-cutting mills on a dead-end road outside the sprawling Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion, which is closed to Palestinians.
A Star of David symbol and the words “Price Tag” were found scrawled over the mosque’s doorway. Militant settlers coined the slogan to warn of the cost of any threat to their presence.
It was the fourth such attack since December and “a very serious incident which we view with utmost gravity”, said Israeli military spokeswoman Lieut. Colonel Avital Liebowitz.
Investigators from the Israeli police and the army, which has controlled the occupied West Bank since 1967, collected forensic evidence at the scene including footprints and a slice of the burnt carpet, and took statements from witnesses.
On Saturday, the Palestinian leadership said the peace talks relaunched on September 2 but now in suspension could not resume until Israel halted settlement construction completely.
Netanyahu said yesterday there were “sensitive diplomatic contacts” with the United States to try to save the talks.
