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Ramallah: Colonists torched a mosque in an Arab village in northern Israel early yesterday, triggering protests and clashes with police. Graffiti "price tag" was also spray-painted on the mosque's walls.
The residents of the village in the Upper Galilee were shocked in the wee hours of yesterday to see heavy smoke emerging from the mosque and rushed to the scene.
Several copies of the Quran were also burnt by the colonists.
Hundreds of residents from the village of Tuba Zangaria clashed with Israeli forces which had sealed the area and initiated an investigation into the incident.
The residents of the village protested and hurled stones at the Israeli forces who responded in turn with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets.
The residents were to hold a major demonstration in the afternoon, where many people from the surrounding villages and Palestinians in 1948 areas were to join. Schools and government departments were boycotted.
Israeli daily Haaretz quoted the Northern Police Commander Major-General Rone Atia as saying "the burning of the mosque is very serious in the context of ‘price tag' attacks."
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement instructing the Israeli Shin Bet to quickly locate those responsible for the attack.
"The Prime Minister was furious when he saw the pictures. The pictures of the burnt mosque are horrifying," the statement said.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni said that such serious incidents required Jews to conduct a self-examination. She stressed that the burning of the mosque was an action that must be condemned.
Dr Mahmoud Al Habash, the Palestinian Minister of Islamic Affairs and Awqaf, condemned the attack, urging Jewish religious figures to distance themselves from such deplorable attacks on religious places.
Dr Al Habash said that nothing has been heard so far from Jewish religious leaders on the repeated attacks of the Israeli colonists on the sacred places.
"It is just time for them to come up with their views on the attacks of the extremist colonists on the mosques and worship places," he said.
He warned against waging a religious war in the region, stressing that during the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation, not even a single Jewish religious site was damaged by Palestinians.
"The last thing the Palestinians want is a religious war in the region, but the Israeli colonists are working hard to initiate it," he said. Yousuf Edais, who heads the Palestinian Higher Judicial Council, said that burning of the mosque and the Quran was a cowardly act of terror that is condemned at all levels.
"We hold the Israeli government, which provides the extremist colonists all the necessary cover and protection, responsible for the incident," he said in an official statement commenting on the attacks.
"Attacking holy places like the mosques fully contradicts all the religions and all the international conventions and agreements," he added.
"There is a serious conspiracy carefully plotted against all Islamic sacred shrines and worship places. Those areas are under a comprehensive religious war by the Israeli colonists," he said, calling on international human rights organisations and mainly the Unesco to follow up with the crimes of the Israeli colonists and help prevent them in the future.
The mosque arson attack in Tuba Zangariya of Upper Galilee will shortly be discussed by the 1948 Areas Higher Follow Up Committee.
Why is Nettie surprised by this? Aren't the colonists doing the very thing that was expected of them? Wasn't that the purpose of settling them there? Israel is going to "look" for those responsible? How hard is to to find them?
