Jewish settlers' children read from the holy Torah in the rubble of an illegal settlement house that was demolished by the Israeli army on Thursday in the northern West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Yitzhar.Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images
In a week of attacks by Jewish extremists on Israeli soldiers, Palestinian property and a military zone on the border with Jordan, the lowest blow was struck at the new mosque of this West Bank town east of Ramallah.
It was shortly before 5 a.m. Thursday morning when unknown persons stole into the Burqa mosque, painted slogans on the wall of the women's section, doused the carpet with gasoline, set fire to it and fled just before the imam arrived to call people to morning prayers. The thick black smoke that enveloped the two-storey building left the white walls dark grey.
It also left the mood among worried Palestinians equally dark.
The Israeli government announced this week it would deal harshly with the kind of terror-like attacks carried out by mostly young Jewish settlers, attacks that threaten to engulf the territories in a new uprising. But the coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which includes some of the settlers' strongest supporters, will be hard pressed to agree on a means of stopping them. If confronted by military action, the gangs made it very clear they will take out their revenge on Palestinians and any prospects of a peace process.
When the smoke in the Burqa mosque had cleared, the writing painted in red on the wall read simply "war," a new declaration. The handiwork was signed "Mitzpe Yitzhar," the name of an illegal Jewish outpost a few kilometres north, off Highway 60.
The Burqa attack took place less than an hour after Israeli soldiers and police stole onto that outpost, removed its handful of residents and tore down two of its four structures. Israeli courts had ordered the demolition as the buildings had been erected on privately owned Palestinian land.
"It's a war between the Israelis," said Fuad Barakat, 53, who lives near the mosque and came running when the alarm was raised early Thursday. "But it seems they're going to take it out on us."
Burqa, visible to the drivers along route 60 sits in a legal cul-de sac, flanked by two other outposts Israeli courts also have ordered demolished. The only vehicle access to the town is via a lengthy route that winds through several other Palestinian communities.
Whoever carried out the arson and vandalism almost certainly arrived and left on foot from one or the other of the neighbouring outposts.
The attack came a day after a similar assault on an 800-year-old, now-unused, mosque in a Jerusalem religious neighbourhood and two days after an attack by young extremists on an Israel Defence Forces base not far from Mitzpe Yitzhar.
That attack of Israeli against Israeli stunned the government of Mr. Netanyahu into saying it was taking action.
"Israel must not be overrun by a group of people who represent a grave danger to its essence and existence," President Shimon Peres, said Thursday after meeting with mainstream West Bank settler leaders.
But it was Mr. Peres, in the 1970s, who persuaded then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to allow the first settlers in this district, Samaria, to put down roots.
Today's "hilltop youth," as the young extremists are known, are just emulating the behaviour of the original movement, says Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Unmaking of Israel, his second book on the history of the settlements.
In the 1970s, the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) pioneers also saw Israel's army as their enemy; its left-wing kibbutz-born leaders, such as Mr. Rabin, governing a different Israel from the Land of Israel they had in mind.
The leaders of today's army also are seen as serving a different Israel from the Jewish kingdom the young settlers seek, although the rank and file is becoming much more settler-oriented.
Contacts within the IDF are believed to warn the settler and hilltop groups of impending military action, as appeared to be the case Thursday, when people in Mitzpe Yitzhar were warned about an hour before the IDF arrived.
The warning didn't prevent the temporary demolition of the outpost's structures, but apparently led to another phone call to carry out the action on Burqa.
On the mosque's new white stone walls, the name of Mitzpe Yitzhar also appeared, along with the phrase "price-tag," the culprits' way of indicating that this kind of destruction is the price to be paid if Israeli forces move against the groups' outposts.
The artwork was signed in Hebrew "Regards from David," a new and apparent reference to the warrior Jewish king of ancient Israel.