JERUSALEM, Sept 4: Vandals torched the wooden door of a monastery near Jerusalem today and pro-settler graffiti daubed in Hebrew was discovered on the building’s stone walls, Israeli police said.
‘Police have opened a special investigation into the incident,’ Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said of the arson that occurred at the Latrun Monastery.
Rosenfeld said the name of an unauthorised settler outpost evacuated this week, called ‘Migron’ and the words ‘Jesus is a monkey’ were also scrawled at the holy site located inside Israel but not far from the occupied West Bank.
Israeli security officials had expressed concern about possible acts of retribution by a suspected settler vigilante group known as ‘Price Tag,’ for Sunday’s court-ordered eviction of 50 families from the site near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
(agencies)