Burning mosques in Palestine

Hamada Faraana

On 3/7/2025, the colony forces deliberately and intentionally burned and vandalized the historic Al-Nasr Mosque in Nablus at dawn on Friday, which demonstrates the extent of the Israeli Zionist Jewish hatred and malice towards Islam and Muslims, Arabs and Arabism, Palestine and Palestinians, humanity and all its human values. Hatred, malice, extremism, aiming to transform, cancel and erase Islamic, Christian, Arab Palestinian Palestine, and to Judaize, Israelize, Hebraize and Zionize it. This is the reality of the conflict between the Palestinian pluralistic democratic national project based on respect for religion, nationalism, values and the right of man to life, according to his belief in what he believes, and respect for others, in the face of the expansionist, unilateral, aggressive, occupying, and substitutionary colonial project: the Israeli colony.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is based on two terms: land and people. They were able to occupy the entire map of Palestine, but they strategically failed to expel and displace the entire Palestinian people, as there remained on the entire land of Palestine, a Palestinian people, exceeding seven million Palestinian Arabs, and therefore they seek to reduce the Arab Palestinian Islamic Christian presence from the land of Palestine. They work to destroy the lives of the Palestinians and make their land, institutions, universities and schools repel them, and therefore they destroyed universities, schools, mosques, churches and all institutions in the Gaza Strip. In their crazy, extremist war on the Gaza Strip since October 8, 2023, they destroyed more than a thousand mosques, foremost among them the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City, which is the oldest mosque in historical Palestine, which was built in the Middle Ages. It was targeted on Friday 8-12-2023 by airstrikes. The Khalid bin al-Walid Mosque in Khan Yunis was also subjected to similar destruction on Wednesday 8-11-2023. On Tuesday 7-12-2023, the Sayyid Hashim Mosque was subjected to an airstrike. It was destroyed. It is known that this mosque contains the shrine of the grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, Hashim bin Abd Manaf, which is the reason why the city of Gaza is called Gaza Hashim.

In the West Bank, 15 mosques have been attacked by the colony forces and by extremist Jewish settlers since the beginning of this year 2025. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments, the settlers bulldozed the entrance to the Abdul Rahman Mosque in the village of Zeita Jama'in. The occupation forces also demolished the Arab al-Ramadin Mosque in Qalqilya. The settlers attacked the mosque in the town of Urif and smashed its windows. In a similar crime, the al-Taqwa Mosque in al-Shanwana in the village of Yatta, the al-Qazzazin Mosque in Hebron, and the al-Sunniyya Mosque in the Old City of Hebron were attacked by throwing bottles of alcohol into its courtyards. The occupation forces also attacked the Salah al-Din Mosque in Abu Dis and vandalized its contents, and stormed the Sakaka Mosque in Salfit.

They killed and destroyed because they failed to end the Palestinian Arab presence on the land of the Gaza Strip, and here they are transferring their crimes, racism and fascism from the Strip to the land of the Palestinian West Bank. They destroyed the camps, and here they are targeting the mosques, their history, their heritage, and what they represent in terms of values and motives for cohesion, steadfastness and faith, and that Palestine belongs to its people, it was, will remain and will return, through survival and steadfastness first, and through struggle, sacrifices and continuous combat work second.

Rebuilding mosques and churches is a national mission as well as a religious one, which is called for by everyone who believes that the mosque has a high status, a role, a meeting place, and a message from heaven and for heaven, and for Muslims on earth, just as the church is a source of terror for the colony and its program because it is also based on loyalty to the homeland, since Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian martyr, as the late martyr President Yasser Arafat used to say.

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In their crazy extremist war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, they have destroyed more than a thousand mosques, most notably the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City. In the West Bank, 15 mosques have been attacked by the colony's forces and settlers.