RAMALLAH, February 24, 2026 (WAFA) – The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates denounced in the strongest terms the torching of Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque in Tell village, southwest of Nablus, today, Monday, by a militia of colonists who set fire to the mosque’s entrance with highly flammable substances. Colonists also sprayed racist slogans hostile to Arabs and Muslims on its walls.

The Ministry slammed this attack as a new crime and a deliberate provocation against the Palestinian people and the wider Arab and Islamic nations and an assault on the sanctity of houses of worship during the holy month of Ramadan, in flagrant violation of all norms, laws, and humanitarian principles.

In a statement, the Ministry held the extremist Israeli occupation government fully and directly responsible for this crime and its consequences, affirming that providing protection to colonists, arming them, attempts to portray the ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, as a religious conflict, and fostering extremist religious ideologies, all fall within the framework of the colonial settler project of the occupation.

The ministry stressed that such policies encourage colonists to continue their attacks targeting houses of worship, aiming to terrorize Palestinian citizens and push them toward forced displacement from their land.

The Ministry called on the international community to assume its legal and moral responsibilities, and to take urgent, immediate, and binding measures to provide protection for the Palestinian people, houses of worship, and religious holy sites, Islamic and Christian alike, in the occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem.

 The Ministry called for holding the perpetrators of these crimes accountable, as part of an organized policy targeting the Palestinian people and their religious and cultural heritage.

The Ministry affirmed that the State of Palestine will continue its political, legal, and diplomatic efforts in all international forums to ensure that the perpetrators do not escape justice, and to mobilize international support to end the occupation and achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, in accordance with international law and resolutions of international legitimacy.

T.R.