Occupied Jerusalem, April 15: Israeli settlers desecrated a mosque on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian security officials said, as Israeli human rights group called on the international community to press Israel to revoke its decision of expelling Palestinians from the West Bank.
The Israeli army confirmed that “anonymous suspects” scrawled graffiti, including a Jewish star of David alongside the name of the Prophet Mohammed written in Hebrew.
The Palestinian and the Israeli officials said the suspects set fire to two cars outside the mosque in Huwara, near Nablus, according to the officials.
The Palestinian security sources blamed the act of vandalism on Israeli settlers.
Israeli soldiers showed up after the attack and erased the graffiti. They prevented journalists from taking photographs until they completed the cleanup.
The Israeli military commander for the West Bank, Brigadier General Nitzan Alon “ordered an immediate investigation into the incident, condemned the acts and said that those responsible should be brought to justice,” the army said in a statement.
In December, settlers vandalized another mosque in the northern West Bank village of Yasuf, torching Muslim holy books and spraying hate messages in Hebrew. The incident triggered clashes between villagers and Israeli troops.
Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual
An Israeli human rights group, meanwhile, urged the international community to press the Jewish state to revoke an order under which thousands of Palestinians could be evicted from the West Bank.
“The Fourth Geneva Convention imposes a complete ban on forced removal of civilians from their homes, a prohibition whose violation is considered a grave violation of the convention,” the Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual said.
“We call on all state parties to the convention to take immediate action to have the (Israeli military order) revoked,” the group said in a statement.
The amendment to a previous order broadens the definition of “infiltrators” who can be expelled from the West Bank to include anyone “who does not hold a permit,” without specifying what type of document is needed.
Seven Israeli rights groups said earlier the order was “worded so broadly such as theoretically allowing the military to empty the West Bank of almost all its Palestinian inhabitants.”
The order was signed on Oct. 13, 2009 and came into effect on Tuesday, but was not publicized by military authorities until it was revealed by human rights groups in the past few days.
Hamoked said that for the first time since Israel seized the Palestinian territories in the 1967 Six Day War, its Palestinian residents are defined “as ‘infiltrators’ or ‘illegal aliens’ in their own land and in their homes.”
“Moreover, defining a person as an infiltrator renders him criminally liable,” the statement said.
“Not only might all Palestinians living in the West Bank be removed from it, but now they also find themselves suddenly declared criminals who may be sentenced to lengthy jail terms despite having done nothing wrong and having always acted lawfully,” it said.
The military has said it did not intend to apply the new orders to Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday called the orders “illegal,” while the Arab League called on the Palestinians to refuse to heed the amended orders.
The 22-member League mandated the Arab bloc at the U.N. General Assembly to set up an emergency session on the issue.
–Agencies