A group of illegal Israeli settlers has set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank and damaged its interior, marking the latest such attack in a surge of settler violence against Palestinians.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA, citing anti-settlement expansion activist Nazmi Salman, reported that the attack targeted the Hajja Hamida Mosque northwest of the city of Salfit early on Thursday.
He added that residents were shocked to find that settlers had set the mosque ablaze by pouring flammable material at the entrance.
Salman noted that locals intervened to prevent the fire from spreading throughout the mosque.
Settlers had also spray-painted racist slogans against Arabs and Muslims on the walls of the mosque.
Elsewhere in the village of Kisan east of Bethlehem, a 25-year-old Palestinian was shot by Israeli forces during a settler attack on the area.
Salameh Rashaida, Deputy Head of Kisan Village Council, told WAFA that a group of settlers, backed by Israeli forces, attacked Palestinian residents while they were plowing their land in the Wadi Abu Ayyash region.
Israeli forces fired live rounds after residents confronted the assailants, shooting and injuring a young man in the leg, who had to be transferred to hospital for treatment.
Separately, a young Palestinian man sustained serious injuries on Wednesday evening after being attacked by settlers in Arab al-Rashaida area northwest of Ariha.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported that the young man suffered a fractured skull, as a result of the settlers’ attack and was transferred to a hospital for treatment.
In a related development, a Palestinian woman sustained bruises after settlers pelted Palestinian vehicles with stones in the village of al-Rashayida, east of Bethlehem.
The head of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC), Mu’ayyad Sha’ban, said on November 5 that Israeli forces carried out 1,584 attacks across the West Bank last month, which included direct physical assaults, home demolitions, and the uprooting of olive trees.
The governorates experiencing the bulk of the violence were Ramallah with 542 incidents, Nablus with 412, and al-Khalil with 401.
The research, compiled in a CRRC monthly report titled Occupation Violations and Colonial Expansion Measures, additionally recorded 766 attacks carried out by settlers.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of historical Palestine illegal.
The ICJ demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds.
The court's advisory opinion, though not legally binding, carries significant political weight as it marks the first time the ICJ has delivered a position on the legality of the 57-year occupation.
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