Mosque torched

October 3, 2011
Mosque Set on Fire in Northern Israel

By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — A mosque in an Arab village in northern Israel was set on fire early Monday in what the police called an arson attack, and an outside wall was defaced with Hebrew graffiti.

The attack followed a series of similar assaults on mosques in the West Bank by arsonists suspected of being radical settlers as part of a campaign known as “price tag,” which seeks to exact a price from local Palestinians for violence against settlers or from Israeli security forces for taking action against illegal construction in Jewish outposts in the West Bank.

The attack on Monday was in the village of Tuba-Zangariya, in Galilee, where calm had prevailed for years.

The mosque was seriously damaged, said Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman. Images showed burned carpets and holy books and charred walls.

Later, about 200 villagers began to march along a road in the direction of Rosh Pina, a Jewish town. Mr. Rosenfeld said the police used tear gas to disperse the protesters after some threw stones at officers and burned tires on the road.

Israeli leaders condemned the attack on the mosque. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the images of the damage were “shocking” and had “no place in the state of Israel.”

The defense minister, Ehud Barak, said that the “criminals” involved wanted to upset Jewish-Arab relations.

The president of Israel, Shimon Peres, and the country’s chief rabbis visited the mosque in the afternoon in a show of solidarity with leading clerics from other faiths.

Sheik Fuad Zangariya, the imam of the mosque, told Israeli television that the village had always maintained friendly relations with neighboring Jewish communities. By evening, the atmosphere in the village was tense but calm.

The police said an investigation was under way. There have been no charges so far in the previous cases of arson against mosques in the West Bank.

As with many of those cases, an outside wall of the burned mosque was scrawled with the Hebrew word for “price tag.” The words “revenge” and “Palmer” also appeared on the wall.

Last month, Asher Palmer, a 25-year-old Jewish settler, was killed with his baby son when their car overturned on a West Bank road. The police said that the crash occurred after Mr. Palmer had been struck in the head by a stone, and that they believed it had been thrown by Palestinians.

Jews and Arabs live in a patchwork of villages and towns in Galilee, where the last major disturbances occurred in 2000. At that time, Israeli Arabs rioted along with Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem at the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, and Israeli police officers shot and killed 13 Israeli Arab citizens.

Arab citizens make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population of more than 7.5 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/world/middleeast/mosque-set-on-fire-in-northern-israel.html?_r=1&hp