JERUSALEM — Arsonists set fire to a mosque in an Arab village in northern Israel early Monday, causing extensive damage and leaving behind graffiti similar to scrawled messages left on mosques in the West Bank that authorities suspect were targeted in recent months by Jewish extremists.
The attack in the village of Tuba-Zangaria set off clashes between villagers and police, who used tear-gas to disperse about 200 protesters. The protesting Arabs burned tires and hurled stones at officers, who blocked them as they marched toward a neighboring Jewish town, a police spokesman said.
The arsonists scrawled on a mosque wall the Hebrew words “Price tag” and “Revenge,” as well as the name “Palmer,” referring to a Jewish settler and his infant son, who were killed when their car overturned near the West Bank city of Hebron last month. Police said the driver, Asher Palmer of Kiryat Arba, was hit in the head by a rock hurled by Palestinians and lost control of his car.
“Price tag” is the term used by militant settlers for retaliation, usually against Palestinian property, for moves by the Israeli authorities to dismantle unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank.
While some previous arson attacks have targeted mosques in the West Bank, Monday’s mosque torching was in a community of Israeli Arabs, who make up one-fifth of Israel’s population.
Video images from the scene showed the fire-blackened interior of the mosque and burned books, which villagers said included volumes of the Koran.
A statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “outraged by the images.” Netanyahu “said that this crime contravenes the values of the State of Israel, in which freedom of religion and freedom of worship are supreme values,” according to the statement. He instructed the chief of Israel’s Shin Bet security service to speedily apprehend the attackers, the statement said.
Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli Arab legislator, said that the attack on the mosque in Tuba-Zangaria stemmed from a failure of the Israeli authorities to enforce the law against violent settlers in the West Bank.
“Those who did not deal with this cancer in the occupied West Bank should not be astonished by the fact that it has metastasized inside Israel,” Tibi said.
