A Palestinian man looks at the damage in the Hajja Hamida Mosque after it was reportedly set on fire and vandalised by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian village of Deir Istiya, near Salfit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. AFP
One wall and at least three copies of the Quran and some of the carpeting at the mosque in the Palestinian town of Deir Istiya had been torched when an Associated Press reporter visited on Thursday.
On one side of the mosque, settlers had left graffiti messages like “we are not afraid,” “we will avenge again,” and “keep on condemning.” The writing scrawled in Hebrew was difficult to make out. It appeared to reference Maj. Gen Avi Bluth, the chief of the military’s Central Command, issued a rare denunciation of the violence on Wednesday.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had sent troops to investigate the scene and hadn't identified any suspects. It said that it was transferring the case to the Israeli police and security agency.
The torching and defacing of the mosque was the latest in a string of attacks that have provoked expressions of concern from top officials, military leaders and the Trump administration.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that there was “some concern about events in the West Bank spilling over and creating an effect that could undermine what we’re doing in Gaza.”
Israeli officials have sought to cast settler violence as the work of a few extremists. But Palestinians and rights groups say that the violence is widespread and carried out by settlers across the territory, with impunity from Israel's far-right government, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu hasn't commented on the surge in violence.
On Tuesday, dozens of masked Israeli settlers set fire to vehicles and other property in the Palestinian villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf. Four Palestinians were wounded in the Israeli settlers' attack.
Decades of violence
Settler violence has been steadily mounting for decades, and the mosque in Deir Istiya had previously come under attack by settlers.
Settlers vandalised the mosque in 2012, according to the U.S. State Department, and again in 2014, according to a roundup of settler violence from the website of the Anti-Defamation League.
The violence had reached peak highs before the war in Gaza erupted more than two years ago, and has only worsened since then. October was the month with the highest-ever number of recorded settler attacks in the West Bank since the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, began keeping track in 2006.
Palestinians say the goal of the violence is to push them off their lands. OCHA said that 3,535 Palestinians have been displaced by settler violence or access restrictions since 2023, a major upswing from previous years.
Settlement expansion
Emboldened by Netanyahu’s right-wing government, settlers have expanded beyond the bounds of preexisting settlements to establish new farming outposts, which they call “young settlements.”
The outposts—usually little more than a few sheds and a pen for livestock — now spill down settlement hilltops toward Palestinian villages, with some settlers gaining control of the villages' agricultural land and water sources.
Palestinians and human rights workers accuse the Israeli army and police of failing to halt attacks by settlers. Israel’s government is dominated by far-right proponents of the settler movement, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who formulates settlement policy, and Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the nation’s police force.
About 94% of all investigation files opened by the Israeli Police into settler violence from 2005 to 2024 ended without indictment, according to monitoring by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. Since 2005, just 3% of the investigation files opened into settler violence have led to full or partial convictions.
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