Palestinians Condemn Israel Settlers' Burning of West Bank Mosque as Ramadan Provocation
JAKARTA - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates strongly condemned the burning of the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque in Tell Village, southwest of Nablus, West Bank by Israeli settlers on Monday.
In addition to burning the entrance to the mosque with highly flammable substances, the settlers also scrawled racist slogans attacking Arabs and Muslims on the walls.
The ministry condemned this attack as a new crime and a deliberate provocation against the Palestinian people and the wider Arab and Islamic nations, as well as an attack on the sanctity of places of worship during the holy month of Ramadan, which is a blatant violation of all norms, laws, and humanitarian principles.
In its statement, the Ministry stated that the Israeli occupation government is extremist and directly responsible for this crime and its consequences, stressing that providing protection to settlers, arming them, attempts to portray the ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, as a religious conflict, and fostering extremist religious ideology, are all included in the framework of the colonial settlement project of the occupation, quoted from WAFA (24/2).
Furthermore, the ministry emphasized that these policies encourage settlers to continue their attacks targeting places of worship, with the aim of terrorizing Palestinians and encouraging them to forcibly expel them from their land.
In this regard, the ministry calls on the international community to assume its legal and moral responsibilities, and to take urgent, immediate and binding measures to provide protection for the Palestinian people, places of worship, and religious holy sites, both Islamic and Christian, in the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.
The ministry called for those responsible for the crime to be held accountable, as part of an organized policy targeting the Palestinian people and their religious and cultural heritage.
"The State of Palestine will continue its political, legal and diplomatic efforts in all international forums to ensure that the perpetrators do not escape justice, and to mobilize international support to end the occupation and achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, in accordance with international law and resolutions that have international legitimacy," the ministry said.