Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank Israel-Palestine Conflicts News

The governor of Salfit says the settlers had entered the village ‘under the protection of the Israeli army’.

Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank, and defaced the front of the building with hateful and racist slogans such as “Revenge” and “Death to Arabs” painted in Hebrew.

Abdallah Kamil, the governor of Salfit, said on Friday the attack targeted the Bar al-Walidain mosque in Marda village, in the latest incident of settler violence.

“A group of immigrants attacked the mosque in the morning by setting it on fire,” Kamil said in a statement.

One resident of the area told AFP that the settlers “burned the door of the mosque and wrote Hebrew slogans on its walls”.

Another resident said that the fire was put out before the entire building was burnt.

Nasfat al-Khufash, the head of the Marda village council, also confirmed the “planned attack by a group of settlers”, in an interview with the Reuters news agency.

Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank is considered illegal by the United Nations and under international law.

Governor Kamil said that the residents had entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army”, and that similar acts of vandalism and graffiti were reported in nearby areas.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ramallah condemned the incident, calling it “a blatant act of racism” and a manifestation of “widespread campaigns to incite our people by elements of the extremist Israeli government.”

The Israeli police and the Shin Bet security forces said in a joint statement: “We see this incident as very serious and will take strong action to bring the perpetrators to justice and receive severe punishment.”

Resident violence in the illegal settlement of the West Bank has erupted since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7 last year. Since October 2024, there have been at least 1,400 attacks on West Bank residents.

Since the Gaza war began, at least 803 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.