Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters

Palestinians in the West Bank town of Hawara awoke on Wednesday to find a blue star of David painted on the outside of their mosque, after what a local resident described as an attack by Israeli settlers who live nearby.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the vandals also uprooted more than 300 olive trees, set two cars on fire and painted the name of the prophet Muhammad, in Hebrew letters, on a wall of the mosque.

Ynet News, another Israeli newspaper site, reported:

Hawara resident Ziad Dib told Ynet that he saw a number of settlers flee the village in a Subaru at around 3 a.m. According to him, the settlers torched his car.

Haaretz noted that Israeli officials said the vandalism may be part of a wider campaign by settlers:

A military official told Army Radio that the army suspected settler violence against Palestinians, part of some settlers’ policy of imposing a ‘price tag’ on a government order to freeze Israeli construction in the West Bank. As part of the strategy, settlers from nearby Yitzhar have launched numerous attacks on Palestinians, including an arson attack on a mosque in December 2009.

B’Tselem

That arson attack on a West Bank mosque in December also featured graffiti written in Hebrew — including the threat, “We will burn all of you.” The earlier attack was condemned by Israeli officials, and Israel’s the chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yona Metzger, compared it to Kristallnacht, the November 1938 attacks on Jewish synagogues and businesses in Nazi Germany.

The New York Times

Kamal Odeh, a Hawara resident who represents of the ruling Fatah party, told Reuters that the attack was the second on the village this week. He said that settlers has set another car on fire and shot at a shop on Monday. “The situation is very tense,” he said. “There is real anger.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a settler who is a leader of a movement that encourages young Israelis to expand settlements by seizing hilltops in the occupied West Bank, told Haaretz that Hawara was “a hostile village that has been the source of a large number of violent attacks against the residents of Yitzhar.” The newspaper reported that in recent weeks, “Two settlers were wounded when stones were thrown at them, one suffering permanent neurological damage.”