Israeli settlers desecrate West Bank mosque

Israeli settlers have desecrated a Palestinian mosque and torched three cars belonging to Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank, locals have said.

Witnesses said on Thursday that the settlers raided the village of Burqa, located east of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, overnight and scrawled graffiti on the wall of the village mosque, Reuters reported.

“It’s the fifth or sixth attack on our village… They do these things and leave, confident because they’re armed and they have the protection of the army,” said Sayel Kanan, deputy mayor of Burqa village.

“They weren’t content to just move onto our lands and keep quiet, but they attack us and chase our farmers away,” Kanan stated.

The mosque was attacked and partially burned in 2011, in an incident that villagers blamed on violent Jewish extremists from the neighboring illegal settler outpost of Givat Assaf.

Thursday’s attack was the latest in a string of attacks against mosques and Palestinian properties.

On Wednesday afternoon, around 15 settlers rampaged through another Palestinian village, pelting a school with stones, Palestinian officials said. Frightened teachers and students locked the doors and hid inside until the assailants left, according to the officials.

On Monday, branches were hacked off more than a dozen ancient olive trees in a third Palestinian village next to an illegal settler outpost, local witnesses said.

Extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have often assaulted Palestinians and vandalized their property under the so-called “price tag” policy. However, the Tel Aviv regime rarely detains the assailants in such attacks.

The Israeli regime maintains a defiant stand on the issue of its illegal settlements on Palestinian land as it refuses to freeze settlement expansion. Tel Aviv has come under repeated and widespread international condemnation over the issue.

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