Abdel Azim Wadi, who heads the village council in Qusra, said the fire hit the mosque's entrance hard enough to damage the stone itself. It's not new for his town.Qusra has faced attack after attack since 2011,he said, and the pace has only picked up since the war in Gaza began.You start to notice how often that word, revenge, keeps turning up on these walls,like someone's keeping score. Farid Jiyousi,from the village council in Kour, said three settlers tried to set their mosque on fire too, but the flames never got past the entrance because people got there fast,and that same word turned up again in Kour, scrawled on the wall the fire had just licked.The UN and Palestinian officials say dozens of Palestinians have died in settler violence this year, with hundreds more hurt.
Israeli troops sent to Qusra found the graffiti and signs of arson and are now hunting for suspects,and that search comes just a day after soldiers detained more than eighty Palestinians in a separate raid on the nearby village of Tel, where Friday's shootout killed four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers.
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