Mayor: Arsonists burn mosque in Palestinian village in West Bank, damage holy books

Arsonists torch mosque in West Bank village

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Arsonists torched a mosque in a West Bank village Monday, scrawling “revenge” on a wall in Hebrew and charring copies of the Muslim holy book in an attack that threatened to stoke tensions over deadlocked Mideast peacemaking.

Palestinians say they suspect hard-line Jewish settlers of setting the fire in the village of Beit Fajjar, near the city of Hebron. The attack is likely to hamper U.S. efforts to sustain month-old between Israelis and Palestinians, now deadlocked over settlement construction.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials condemned the arson attack in an apparent attempt to limit the political fallout.

The settlements, where 300,000 Jews live among 2.5 million Palestinians, are one of the thorniest issues in Israeli-Palestinian relations and the main obstacle at the moment to continuing a round of talks restarted a month ago in Washington.

Palestinian negotiators say they cannot build a state that includes the West Bank while Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements on the land they claim.

Israel last week refused to extend a moratorium on new construction in West Bank settlements, putting peace talks into doubt because Palestinians have threatened to quit if building resumes. Netanyahu is under heavy international pressure to put restrictions back into place.

A senior Israeli official said Netanyahu would convene top Cabinet ministers on Tuesday to vote consider U.S. proposals to salvage the talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting will be closed. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley refused to give details on Monday.

Netanyahu’s office denied media reports that the ministers would vote on U.S. ideas. In a statement, he said that there is nothing concrete to bring before his Cabinet.

White House envoy George Mitchell has been shuttling across the region over the past week in hopes of brokering a compromise, but so far has not been able to find a solution.

At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting Monday, Netanyahu said Israel was “in intense diplomatic negotiations with the American administration to find a solution to allow the talks to continue.”

At the scene of the fire, dozens of grim-faced residents milled around as blue-clad Israeli police and khaki-uniformed soldiers tried to maintain order.

“Only somebody who doesn’t fear God would do this,” said resident Ayman Taqatqa. “We won’t allow people to offend our religion. We’ll defend it with our lives.”

There was no claim of responsibility for the blaze, but suspicions fell on extremist Jewish settlers. A tiny minority of hard-liners often damage Palestinian property in what they call the “price tag” policy — meant to frighten Palestinians or to express outrage over their government’s slowdown in settlement construction.

“Revenge” was scribbled on an inside wall of the sooty mosque. A neat row of Muslim holy books, the Quran, were partially charred, and patches of the carpet were blackened. The blaze otherwise appeared to be contained and caused limited damage.

Taqatqa said he saw a car pull up to the mosque before dawn. Two men then rushed inside, while another two stood guard outside and two men stayed in the car, he said. He then said he saw a small blaze and began yelling for his neighbors to come. He said they waited for the men to leave before putting out the blaze, fearing they were armed Jewish settlers.

Residents later prayed in the sooty mosque and an elderly man chanted verses from one of the charred Quran books.

The village is ringed by Jewish settlements, and both Palestinian residents and a settler leader acknowledged that relations are tense. But village councilman Kamel Hamish said there had not been any physical altercations between Jews and Palestinians in the past.

In a statement released by his office, Netanyahu condemned the attack on the mosque and ordered his security forces “to act with determination” to bring the arsonists to justice. Defense Minister Ehud Barak described it as a “shameful act.”

“Whoever did this is a terrorist in every sense of the word, and intended to hurt the chances for peace and dialogue with the Palestinians,” he said in a statement.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said they were looking into the incident. It was the third West Bank mosque burning in the past year, following incidents last December and March.

Nobody has been charged with any of the arson attacks, said Dana Zimmerman of Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group which monitors attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. The group noted that only 10 percent of attacks on Palestinians result in prosecutions.

U.N. spokesman Richard Miron said Israel must take action.

“It’s a clear act of desecration and comes in the wake of other attacks upon mosques,” Miron said. “We are reminding the Israeli government that the extremists responsible for these attacks must be bought to justice.”

Associated Press Writer Diaa Hadid in Jerusalem contributed to this report.