After completing Maghrib prayer, Yasser Saqer Rashid sat down in one corner of the al-Marah mosque in the occupied West Bank and started reading the Quran. But moments later, a commotion outside the mosque drew his attention.Israeli settlers were storming the courtyard of the mosque located in the town of Deir Dibwan near Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listRashid said that a settler poured an incendiary substance on the window of the mosque to start a fire. “He wanted to burn me alive,” the 92-year-old Palestinian American told Al Jazeera.“I was shocked by a settler holding a petrol bomb, pointing it at my face and clothes near the window,” he said.While the full extent of the June 14 structural damage to the al-Marah mosque remains unclear, surveillance footage documented masked settlers breaking into the mosque’s inner rooms, before stepping outside to torch six vehicles belonging to local residents.In the neighbouring town of Burqa, another mosque, al-Noor, was targeted by an arson attack shortly afterwards, amid escalating violence by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Attackers ignited tyres and flammable materials at the doors in an attempt to burn the building down.Settler attacks have exploded during Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 73,000 people since October 7, 2023. This Tuesday, on June 16, in response to one of the latest incidents, the Palestinian group Hamas condemned illegal Israeli settlers for setting fire to a …
