Turkey and seven other Muslim-majority countries on Thursday held Israel responsible for arson attacks on two mosques in the occupied West Bank, amid a rise in settler violence against Palestinians.
The foreign ministers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan and Egypt condemned what they called “continued and escalating settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”
“The ministers hold Israel, as the occupying power, responsible for these attacks,” they said in a joint statement.
The statement followed attacks early Wednesday on mosques in Jiljiliya and Mazari an-Nubani, two Palestinian villages north of Ramallah.
Local Palestinian officials blamed Israeli settlers for the fires. Israel’s military confirmed that two mosques had been burned and that graffiti had been written on their walls but did not identify those responsible.
“The forces searched the area for suspects and located two burned mosques as well as graffiti on the walls,” the military said. “The suspects had fled prior to the arrival of the forces.”
Osama Abdullah, head of the Jiljiliya village council, said settlers set fire to an ablution room, damaged the village’s main mosque and wrote hostile slogans in Hebrew on its exterior walls.
AFP journalists who visited the mosque saw smoke and fire damage to its ceiling, walls and floors. Graffiti included references to the Hilltop Youth, a loose movement of settlers linked to attacks on Palestinians and efforts to establish unauthorized settlement outposts.
Abdullah said the attackers arrived between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. but were unable to enter the mosque because its door was locked. They instead set fire to the ablution area on a lower floor before residents and Palestinian civil defense crews extinguished the flames.
Saad Dagher, head of the council in Mazari an-Nubani, said attackers targeted another mosque at about 3 a.m. with Molotov cocktails. Residents extinguished that fire.
The Palestinian Authority’s Religious Affairs Ministry condemned the attacks and called for international intervention.
The fires came amid what the United Nations describes as record levels of settler violence in the West Bank.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said more than 1,000 settler attacks had caused casualties or property damage in more than 230 Palestinian communities since the beginning of 2026. More than 2,200 Palestinians have been displaced this year because of settler attacks and restrictions on access to their land, according to the agency.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said settler violence was averaging six attacks a day and warned of settlement expansion, land confiscation and Palestinian displacement at levels not seen since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, excluding Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, along with about 3 million Palestinians.
The United Nations and most governments regard Israeli settlements in the occupied territory as illegal under international law.
© Agence France-Presse