‘He wanted to burn me alive’: 92-year-old recounts West Bank settler attack

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.

Rashid 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 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 since Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, where more than 73,000 people have been killed. On Tuesday, the Palestinian group Hamas condemned illegal Israeli settlers for setting fire to a mosque in the village of Jiljilya near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

In many cases, settlers are accompanied by Israeli forces. At least 13 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank so far this year, according to United Nations data.