Israeli security authorities said Monday they hadn't determined what caused the blaze in the village of Libran al-Sharqia near the city of Nablus.

But the fire fits a pattern of attacks by religious Jewish settlers and their ultra-nationalist allies in recent months in which Muslim holy sites have been targeted. Liberal Jews who oppose the settlements have also been attacked.

Several weeks ago, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took over two major West Bank sites that are holy to Muslims and Jews, while archaeologists said discoveries in Arab East Jerusalem reinforced Israel's historical claim to the entire city.

Israeli authorities are steadily forcing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem, captured in the 1967 war, and declared part of Israel's "eternal and indivisible capital," to make room for Jewish settlements to change the demography of the holy city.

There has also been a growing number of incursions into Palestinian villages to reactivate long-abandoned synagogues to re-establish a Jewish presence. Palestinian homes have been attacked and olive groves, a mainstay of the Palestinians' economy, cut down by night-time marauders.

In January, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, who teaches at a yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar in the northern West Bank, was arrested with 10 other Jews in connection with the burning of a mosque in the nearby Palestinian village of Yasuf in December.

Yitzhar is one of the most radical West bank settlements and its Jewish residents have repeatedly clashed with Israeli security forces in recent weeks as tempers and frustrations on both sides have boiled over in the region.

He was one of two West Bank rabbis who wrote a book discussing the killing of non-Jewish babies with the supposed blessing of Jewish religious law.

The liberal Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Shapira was handed over to the internal security service for interrogation about the arson attack.

But the book he wrote with fellow yeshiva teacher Rabbi Yosef Elizur, "The King's Torah," has been endorsed by a number of prominent rabbis. A handful have condemned it but the chief rabbinate has made no comment, a position Palestinians view as a silent endorsement of the book.

In January, the Anti-Defamation League has called on the Orthodox leader to "speak out against this text as a perversion of Judaism, cloaking itself as an authoritative interpretation of Jewish biblical law."

ADL National Director Abraham Foxman warned the book may have stirred up settler violence, including the burning of the Yasuf mosque.

However, Israel's Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Israeli religious organizations to order Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to take action against the authors.

Netanyahu has defied U.S. President Barack Obama by refusing to freeze all settlement building in the West Bank, where 400,000 Jews now live in an archipelago of settlements, some now the size of small cities.

But the settlers -- religious and ultra-nationalists alike -- fear they will eventually be forced to abandon their 120 settlements as part of a peace settlement with the Palestinians brokered -- or possibly imposed -- by the United States.

The Palestinians want to declare an independent state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Ultra-religious Jews claim the West Bank was given to their ancient forebears by God.

The Israel-United States rift is deemed the worst for 30 years. It has left the hawkish Netanyahu caught between meeting Obama halfway and facing a right-wing backlash or antagonizing the Americans and jeopardizing U.S. aid and support.

Instead, he implemented a discreet, de facto halt in East Jerusalem settlement projects. That resulted in a serious challenge to his leadership from ultra-rightists within his Likud Party in late April.

The rebels, led by Moshe Feiglin, a religious nationalist firebrand, accused him of "planning a disengagement from Jerusalem" and demanded party elections within the next few months.

On April 29, Netanyahu won a vote in the party's central committee to postpone elections for two years, heading off an apparent bid by Feiglin to oust him.

That's likely to trigger a sharp intensification of West Bank attacks by the hard-liners.

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