Unknown men set fire to a mosque in the town of Al-Bireh, just north of Jerusalem, on the night of July 26-27.
The assailants wrote on the walls of the mosque graffiti in Hebrew that read “Near the Arabs and not the Jews” and “the Land of Israel is for the people of Israel”.
The mayor of Al Bireh, Azzam al Qaraan, noted that the mosque is at one end of the city and a few hundred meters from a Jewish colony.
The mayor and neighbours accused the settlers of the incident.
Illegal Israeli settlers raided the city of Al Bireh during dawn and set fire to a mosque and sprayed racist slurs. #IsraeliCrimes pic.twitter.com/sd2KgBWx7w
— PLO Department of International Relations (@PalestinePDP) July 27, 2020
The fire broke out at 3 am in the back of the mosque, which suffered material damage.
Neighbours in the area came to extinguish the flames before firefighters arrived.
In another incident apparently involving Jewish settlers this July, 13 Palestinian vehicles were damaged in the village of Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya, near the city of Nablus, also in the occupied West Bank.
In that incident, graffiti was also painted in Hebrew with a star of David on a Palestinian bus.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 30 physical and vandalism attacks by Jewish settlers were recorded in the West Bank last June.
Just a few months ago, in another incident similar to Al Bireh, a mosque was set on fire in the village of Beit Safafa in the Jerusalem area, with graffiti in Hebrew included.
