Inhuman zionist settlers torch Palestinian mosque

Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian mosque in the occupied West Bank, torching part of it.

The main gate and some carpets of the mosque in Deir Istiya village in the north of the Occupied West Bank were damaged in the incident, said local sources on Wednesday.

Israeli settlers also scrawled graffiti on the walls of the mosque.

Israeli settlers, mostly armed, regularly attack Palestinian villages and farms and set fire to their mosques, olive groves and other properties in the West Bank under the so-called “price tag” policy. However, Tel Aviv rarely detains the assailants.

An estimated 8,000 Palestinian olive trees were destroyed or damaged during attacks by Israel’s illegal settlers across the occupied West Bank in 2013, the Al-Tadamun Foundation for Human Rights, an NGO, said in an annual report earlier this month.

“Settlers’ attacks include uprooting, burning and cutting down olive trees… Olive groves were also flooded by wastewater from the settlements,” said the rights group, adding, “We have been unable to count the hundreds of trees damaged in groves close to settlements due to Israeli security measures.”

The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine have created a major obstacle to the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967.

The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.