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Mosques set ablaze
Israeli settlers set fire to two mosques in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinians said, as tensions flared after a clash near the village of Tal left four Palestinians and two Israelis dead.
“The Israeli military has launched an aggressive crackdown in the occupied West Bank, storming several towns and villages and detaining hundreds of Palestinians, amid escalating attacks by Jewish settlers, in a furious reaction to a shootout in a village near Nablus in which four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed”
In Qusra, the mayor Abdul Azim Wadi said settlers set fire to a mosque that was under construction and spray-painted graffiti that included the word "revenge" on the walls.
In Kour, Palestinian officials said settlers set fire to another mosque and sprayed slogans on its walls, while the Israeli military said troops were sent to Qusra and that police would investigate and collect evidence.
The BBC reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the Tal incident by vowing to take "powerful action," and that includes the possible demolition of the homes of two Palestinians allegedly involved.
The AP said the mosques in Qusra and Kour suffered extensive damage in the fires, and described the attacks as an apparent Israeli settler attack after a spate of violence that killed four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers.
Reactions and arrests
Palestinians and the Israeli opposition accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government of turning a blind eye to attacks by settlers against Palestinians, which they said threaten to ignite widespread violence across the territory.
Ahmed Abu Mahmoud, 64, who lives next to the Qusra mosque, said he heard noises at 3 a.m. and discovered the mosque had been set on fire, adding, "The military arrived here, saw with their own eyes and then left."
The AP reported that Israel arrested more than 70 Palestinians over the weekend as they attempted to contain the escalating violence, while also saying it condemned such incidents and worked with police to investigate the mosque attack.
In a separate account, Al Jazeera said the Israeli military launched a "wide-scale military operation" across the West Bank ordered by Netanyahu after the deaths of the soldiers, and described settlers becoming bolder and more violent, marauding through villages and scrawling graffiti.
Al Jazeera also quoted Abdel Azim Wadi, head of the village council in Qusra, saying settlers spray-painted slogans like “Jewish revenge” on the walls of the newly built Al-Rahma Mosque as videos showed fire consuming the mosque.
What comes next
Netanyahu said troops entered villages across the West Bank to seize weapons and make arrests, and he told Israelis they were "also prepared to operate on a broader scale against the terrorist nests," as the siege and road closures continued.
“Beyond the News episode on Sunday, July 26 discussed the significance of the timing of the sharp escalation in Israeli settlers' attacks and the unprecedented rise in the pace of establishing settler outposts in the West Bank”
The BBC reported that the confrontation in the West Bank has further inflamed a situation where violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians has grown, and said Netanyahu would speed up the establishment and legalisation of farm outposts in response to the killing of Israelis in Tal on Friday.
The Tehran Times framed the escalation as raising concerns within Israel, saying the West Bank reached a renewed peak in Israeli aggression following clashes near Nablus and citing settlement expansion and land confiscations alongside incursions and arson attacks on Palestinian villages.
In the same period, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry and the Palestinian diaspora called on world governments to take urgent international steps to stop assaults by settlers and the occupation forces in the West Bank and to impose sanctions on the settlement system, according to Al-Television Al-Arabi.
The Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Fahmy urged U.S. President Donald Trump to curb the policies of the Israeli government toward the Palestinians, warning that the region is approaching a 'moment of explosion,' as the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it had announced a 'state of alert' in all its embassies and missions.
