Israeli settlers torch, vandalize West Bank mosque as attacks skyrocket

Israeli settlers torched a mosque within the central West Financial institution on Thursday amid a severe escalation in settler attacks throughout the Palestinian territory in current weeks. The incident drew widespread condemnation from each Palestinian and Israeli officers.

What occurred: Within the early morning hours of Thursday, shortly earlier than the Fajr prayer, dozens of settlers stormed the Hajja Hamida Mosque situated between the cities of Deir Istiya and Kafr Haris in northwest Salfit. They poured a flammable liquid on the mosque’s entrance earlier than setting it on hearth, the official WAFA information company reported.

The attackers additionally burned copies of the Quran, based on native Palestinian media retailers, together with Qudsnet, and sprayed hateful anti-Arab and anti-Muslim messages in Hebrew on the mosque’s partitions, akin to, “We aren’t afraid,” “We are going to take revenge once more” and “Carry on condemning” — a reference to Israeli condemnations over the surge in violence within the West Financial institution.

Residents and native civil protection groups intervened to include the hearth, limiting injury to one of many mosque’s partitions, native media reported.

Shortly after, Israeli forces arrived on the web site, performed subject investigations after which withdrew, based on WAFA.

The Palestinian International Ministry strongly condemned the mosque assault as a “heinous crime dedicated by extremist settlers.”

In a press release launched Thursday, the ministry stated it “holds the Israeli authorities absolutely chargeable for this harmful escalation and the rising wave of settler terrorism, which is inspired and guarded by official insurance policies geared toward displacing Palestinians and entrenching the colonial occupation.”

Equally, the Ministry of Non secular Endowments and Affairs condemned the arson assault towards the mosque in a Thursday assertion.

“The burning of the mosque clearly demonstrates the barbarity to which the racist Israeli incitement machine has descended towards Islamic and Christian holy websites in Palestine,” the assertion learn.

Why it issues: Thursday’s incident comes days after dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked the villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf in Tulkarm on Tuesday. The settlers stormed al-Lada’in industrial space, setting hearth to a number of autos and different property.

The violence additionally prolonged to agricultural lands, the place settlers set ablaze steel sheds and tents belonging to a small Bedouin group in Beit Lid. Settlers reportedly threw stones at residents, injuring not less than 4 Palestinians.

The settlers then fled to a close-by industrial zone and attacked Israeli troopers who responded to the violence. 4 settlers had been arrested, three of whom had been launched by Wednesday, based on Israeli police.

Israeli army commanders condemned Tuesday’s assault, blaming it on ultranationalist settlers.

In a uncommon public rebuke on Wednesday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog condemned the “stunning and severe” assault by “a handful of violent and harmful people” within the West Financial institution, calling on involved authorities to “act decisively to eradicate the phenomenon.”

“Such violence towards civilians and military troopers crosses a purple line and I strongly condemn it,” he wrote on X.

The Israeli military’s chief of employees, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, and the chief of the army’s Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, issued separate statements condemning the settler violence on Wednesday.

The commander of the military’s regional brigade within the northern West Financial institution, Ariel Gonen, additionally denounced the “grave” escalation.

“We lately witnessed a pointy and important enhance within the variety of nationalist violent incidents within the brigade’s sector and all through Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] usually,” Gonen stated in a press release Thursday cited by Israeli media.

“It is a grave, growing and harmful phenomenon that features hurt to uninvolved Palestinians and at instances even to the safety forces themselves,” he stated.

“A fringe group of criminals and anarchists is taking the regulation into its personal arms; these acts are unjustifiable and insupportable. This violence undermines the area’s safety stability,” Gonen added, calling on the army to forestall “acts of violence and nationalist crime.”

In the meantime, Israel’s far-right authorities, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has not commented on the surge in violence.

Background: Israeli settler assaults towards Palestinians within the West Financial institution have been a daily incidence for many years, however incidents have elevated at an alarming charge in current weeks, significantly in the course of the ongoing olive harvest season, which peaks in October and November.

On Thursday, dozens of armed settlers stormed the Bedouin group of Khirbet al-Sidra, northeast of east Jerusalem, and blocked the group’s major highway with a bulldozer, based on WAFA. Earlier that day, settlers attacked Palestinian olive harvesters within the city of Aqraba, south of Nablus, forcing them to depart their land.

In one other incident on Wednesday night time, Israeli settlers vandalized livestock gear and plowed via a big space of Palestinian farmland within the northern Jordan Valley, WAFA reported. Settlers additionally stole iron fences and slashed the tires of a water tanker within the al-Deir space.

The precise variety of settler assaults throughout the West Financial institution varies based on completely different sources.

In line with the UN Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, October 2025 noticed the very best month-to-month variety of Israeli settler assaults for the reason that workplace started recording such incidents in 2006. In its weekly replace, OCHA reported that October alone recorded 264 assaults within the West Financial institution, inflicting casualties, property injury or each — a median of eight assaults per day.

The Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Fee reported on Nov. 4 {that a} whole of two,350 assaults had been carried out by each Israeli forces (1,584 assaults) and settlers (766 assaults) within the West Financial institution throughout October.

Knowledge launched by Israel’s safety institution this month documented 704 settler assaults between January and October 2025, in comparison with 675 incidents throughout all of 2024.

Because the conflict in Gaza erupted in October 2023, the West Financial institution has seen file numbers of settler assaults, together with bodily assaults and property destruction.

In line with the Institute for Palestine Research, Israeli settlers launched 7,154 assaults within the West Financial institution and east Jerusalem between Oct. 7, 2023, and Oct. 7, 2025.

Know extra: Settlements within the West Financial institution and east Jerusalem, each internationally acknowledged as occupied territory, are thought of unlawful beneath worldwide regulation and the Fourth Geneva Conference, which prohibits an occupying energy from transferring its personal civilian inhabitants into the territory it occupies.

Israel disputes this interpretation and has continued to expand settlements through the years.

About 230,000 Israeli settlers reside in occupied east Jerusalem, and round 500,000 reside in the remainder of the West Financial institution, the place there are roughly 300 settlements, based on the UN Workplace of the Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights.

In August, the Israeli authorities authorised the extremely controversial E1 settlement venture, which may successfully cut up the West Financial institution into two components — reducing off the northern cities of Ramallah and Nablus from Bethlehem and Hebron within the south, and isolating east Jerusalem. The plan envisions the development of roughly 3,400 housing items east of Jerusalem. In line with the UN, development of this venture would have extreme penalties for the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state, making its realization more and more unlikely.