Ramallah, December 14: Israeli forces prevented a delegation of Jewish rabbis and social activists from entering the West Bank village of Yasouf on Sunday. The village is where a mosque was torched by Jewish occupiers on Friday.
The Israeli Army Radio said that 20 rabbis had arrived in order to donate copies of the Holy Qur’an to the mosque. The rabbis waited at the nearby Za’tara junction while soldiers blocked them from proceeding into the village for fears that conflict would break out if they entered the village.
Monir Al-Aboushi, the governor of Salfeet, told Arab News: “It is very difficult to control any development on the ground due to the very tense situation in the village.” He added that the villagers believed that the delegation of rabbis contained occupiers from West Bank settlements which would lead to more tension.”
Aboushi said that he met the rabbis at the Za’tara junction and told them that “the torching of the mosque was a racist act. We are in favor of true peace, and I thank you for coming to identify with us on the torching .I hope we can live in this land as two states.” The governor also said to the rabbis: “There are people in the village calling for revenge, but they are the minority. We are a national movement and not a religious one, and all we want is a Palestinian state.”
Abdulrahim Muslih, head of the Yasouf Municipal Council, told Arab News that the council had refused to allow the rabbis to enter the village after “We learned that Jewish occupiers are included in the delegation, and this decision will not change.”
Muslih added that hundreds of school students marched to protest the torching of the mosque.
Israeli Radio cited Rabbi Menachem Froman of the Tekoa settlement near Hebron as saying that Jewish religious law prohibits doing harm to religious sites.
“This deed was a serious religious crime,” he said, adding that mutual respect between Jews and Muslims could bring peace. “If we keep hiding our heads in the sand and denying that the conflict (with the Palestinians) is religious, we will never get anywhere,” Froman said.
Early Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli security branches to find the “criminals” who vandalized the mosque.
“Expose the criminals as soon as possible, and put them on trial,” Netanyahu was quoted by the local daily Haaretz as telling officials.
“Any violence is unacceptable, whether Jews against Palestinians or Palestinians against Jews,” Netanyahu said. “The government will respond forcefully to all kinds of violence,” he vowed.
On Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that Israel must rein in settlers’ “brutal” actions. “The torching of the mosque in Yasouf is a despicable crime, and the settlers are behaving with brutality,” said Abbas, who called the act a violation of religious freedom.
——Agencies