Suspects arrested over Israel ‘miracle church’ arson

Another police spokesman told the AFP news agency the arrests followed an undercover investigation also involving internal security services.

Israeli authorities apprehended three people suspected of having set fire to the historic Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha, on the Sea of Galilee last month.

The suspects have not been identified and the police have hinted that more arrests are to come.

The church was built in the 1980s on the site of 4th and 5th century houses of worship that commemorated what Christians revere as Jesus’s miraculous feeding of 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. As well as extensive fire damage to the church, a verse from a Hebrew prayer denouncing the worship of “false gods” was spray-painted in red on an outer wall of the church, suggesting Jewish zealots were responsible.

One of the buildings within the compound was completely destroyed in the blaze on June 18 but the church itself was not damaged. A modern church now sits at the site, incorporating remains of a 5th-century Byzantine church and its mosaics.

Father Gregory Collins, head of the Saint Benedictine Order in Israel, which oversees the church, last month called the arson “an attack on Israeli democracy, not just on a religious group”.

Using the slogan of “price tag attacks”, right-wing Jewish extremists have carried out a large number of arson and graffiti attacks against Muslim and Christian sites and property in the West Bank and Jerusalem and attacked IDF installations, ostensibly as retribution for Palestinian attacks on Jews and Israeli government actions deemed contrary to the interests of West Bank settlers. But sources noted the fact that the investigation is currently being led by the Nationalist Crimes Division of the Judea and Samaria Police, a unit specializing in investigating hate crimes by Jewish extremists.

Police initially held 16 youths for questioning, although they were later released with no charges.

In April, vandals smashed gravestones at a Maronite Christian cemetery near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.