YASUF, West Bank — Passions ran high on Sunday in this Palestinian village in the northern West Bank two days after arsonists, presumed by Palestinians and many Israelis to be Jewish extremists, set fire to the central mosque.
A delegation of Jewish religious leaders and activists, including some from West Bank settlements, tried to reach the village to express their abhorrence of the attack. But the Israeli army prevented the group from entering Yasuf for security reasons as enraged villagers proclaimed that the visitors would not be welcome.
Hussam Abd al-Fattah, the muezzin at a small nearby mosque, said that worshipers spotted the fire on Friday as they returned from dawn prayers, and that neighbors rushed in to help extinguish the flames.
On the front stoop of the mosque, the vandals left graffiti in Hebrew that read, "Price tag — Greetings from Effi."
Price tag is the name of a provocative policy developed by some radical settlers last year. It calls for settlers and their supporters to respond to any move by the Israeli authorities against the settlements or illegal outposts, usually by attacking Palestinian property. The villagers assume the attack was meant as revenge for the Israeli government's recently declared temporary moratorium on new building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Effi, a Hebrew nickname for Efraim, is also an acronym for a far-rightist group.
Over the weekend Israeli leaders harshly condemned the attack on the mosque. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was "no place for violence of any sort, neither Jews against Palestinians nor Palestinians against Jews." He said he had ordered the security services to try to "apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice as quickly as possible."
President Shimon Peres called the arson a "grave act" that "stands against all the values of the state of Israel."
The Chief Rabbi of Israel planned to visit Yasuf on Monday.
Mainstream settler leaders also condemned the desecration of the mosque.
Because the Jewish delegation could not enter the village on Sunday, Abbushi, the district governor, went to the nearest army checkpoint to meet them. Led by Rabbi Menachem Froman of the settlement of Tekoa, a fervent advocate of Jewish-Arab coexistence, the group sang a traditional song of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, which is being celebrated now, about banishing the darkness.