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A MOSQUE in the West Bank village of Dir Istia was burned early yesterday by vengeful and “extremist” Israeli settlers.
Graffiti sprayed on the site read: “Blood for blood, Qusra,” in reference to a village where Palestinians captured more than a dozen Israeli settlers who attacked them last week.
Meanwhile, the United Nations warned that the annual rate of Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians had almost quadrupled in eight years.
There have been 2,100 such attacks since 2006, the year the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs started counting. Annual totals are up from 115 in 2006 to 399 in 2013.
More than 1,700 Palestinians were injured by settlers or by troops in clashes in that period.
In Qusra and two neighbouring villages residents filed 21 complaints with police between 2011 and 2013 but none led to indictments, said Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.
Across the region indictments had only been filed in 8.5 per cent of 825 completed police investigations monitored by Yesh Din.
In most cases investigators failed to locate suspects or collect enough evidence, the group said.
Israeli security forces have largely failed to stem the so-called “price tag” campaign in which thugs cut down trees, deface mosques and beat Palestinian farmers.
Israeli leaders have publicly denounced such attacks and the military claims soldiers are under strict orders to stop them.
But critics say Israeli governments stacked with pro-settler politicians have often been reluctant to confront settlers, even those groups seen as a hardline fringe.
“There is not enough pressure from the prime minister, the defence minister, the interior minister to prevent this,” said Gadi Zohar, a former senior Israeli army commander in the West Bank.
So far there have been several cases of vandalism in apparent response to the Qusra incident.
Apart from yesterday’s attack, settlers have damaged hundreds of trees in Qusra, killed sheep, torched six cars and set fire to a mosque in dozens of attacks, said Mayor Abdel Azim Wadi.
