Israeli settlers have tried to burn down a mosque in El-Bireh, near Ramallah in the West Bank. The mosque is situated on a hilltop opposite an Israeli settlement.

Hussam Abu Al-Rub, the Palestinian Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs, said settlers attacked the mosque after midnight. He said they had spray painted anti-Palestinian slogans in Hebrew. Arab News reports that on one of the mosque’s walls a slogan read: A siege on the Arabs, not on the Jews. The settlers also hurled firebombs into the mosque. Part of the bathroom was burned by a firebomb flung in through a window. Abu Al-Rub said, “Had the firebomb got to the carpet floor of the prayer hall, the mosque would have burned completely.”

Arab News reports that the attack appeared to be the latest in the so-called “price tag” attacks that hardliner nationalist Israelis have been carrying out against Arabs in recent years. These attacks usually follow Palestinian acts of resistance to the Israeli occupation, or perceived ‘efforts’ by Israeli authorities to ‘limit’ settlement expansion.

Abu Al-Rub said, “The Israeli government is responsible for the attack because they are the ones who opened the way for settlers to take our land and terrorize our people.”

Umm Muhammed Umar