US condemns West Bank mosque arson

The US on Tuesday condemned an arson attack on a mosque near Ramallah and urged Israel to bring its perpetrators to justice. A mosque in Jaba village was set on fire on Tuesday and graffiti on its walls raised suspicion settlers carried out the attack in anger over plans to remove 30 settler families from the illegal Ulpana outpost. The words "Ulpana War" were scrawled in Hebrew on the torched mosque's walls. The US condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. "Hateful, dangerous, and provocative actions such as these are never justified," she added in a statement. Washington urged the Israeli government to bring the perpetrators to justice "expeditiously." According to Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, the vandalizing of the mosque in Jaba was the 10th time since 2009 that Israeli settlers scrawled hostile graffiti or attempted arson on places of worship in the West Bank. Though Israeli authorities made arrests in a few of the cases, there have been no prosecutions for the crimes. "Looking at the history of the Israeli government in holding to account settlers for these kinds of acts, it's minimal," B'Tselem spokesman Sarit Michaeli said.