Palestinians accused Jewish settlers of setting fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank Tuesday, an incident that raised tensions as a US envoy began a mission to get peace talks going. Israeli security officers were at the scene investigating the fire but have not determined its cause. Evidence was taken for forensic examination, an Israeli police spokesman said. The mosque in the village of Libban Al-Sharqia, near the Palestinian city of Nablus, was gutted overnight by the blaze that also burned holy books. There were no witnesses to what Palestinian locals and officials assumed was another attack by Jewish settlers in the Nablus area. Settlers have also been suspected of vandalizing two other mosques and a cemetery in the last six months. “We condemn this criminal act perpetrated by settlers,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said. “This is a threat to all the efforts aimed at reviving the peace process.” US special envoy George Mitchell arrived in Israel Monday to try to get indirect peace talks under way. The Arab League approved the US-mediated talks Saturday and they are expected to begin soon. Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the Palestinian Minister of Religious Endowments, dismissed an Israeli suggestion that the blaze could have been started by an electrical fault. “I say to the Israelis that the settlers are a danger to yourselves and us,” he said while assessing the damage. An Israeli government minister assumed it was arson and said those responsible would be caught. “I have no shadow of doubt their aim was to ignite fire in the region and this is lamentable,” Industry and Trade Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel's army radio. Attacks on Palestinian villages and farmland tend to rise whenever the Israeli government takes action or proposes taking steps deemed by settlers as a threat to their West Bank enclaves.
