Pakistan, 7 others blame Israel for attacks on West Bank mosques

RIYADH: Muslim-majority countries including regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Turkiye said on Thursday that they held Israel responsible for arson attacks on two West Bank mosques, which Palestinian officials said were torched by settlers.

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkiye lambasted “the continued and escalating settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank”, pointing to the mosques that were set on fire a day earlier.

“The Ministers hold Israel — as the occupying power — responsible for these attacks,” they said in a joint statement.

On Wednesday, Israeli settlers set fire to mosques in the West Bank villages of Jiljiliya, north of Ramallah, and neighbouring Mazari an-Nubani, their mayors said, with journalists at one site seeing scorched walls and graffiti.

Israel’s military confirmed the arson and graffiti on the mosques, but did not identify the perpetrators. Journalists who visited one torched mosque saw graffiti daubed on the walls in Hebrew. Some read “vengeance” and: “Hi, from the Hilltop Youth”.

The incidents came during a period of increased attacks against Palestinian communities by settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza conflict in 2023.

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2026