Sunday’s long-awaited indictment follows months of investigations that had failed to produce concrete results.
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A minor who was not named confessed to helping plan the Duma attack, according to Shin Bet, and was charged with providing assistance and conspiracy to commit a crime. All four were charged with belonging to a terrorist organization.
“This case took place months ago and during that time, unlike what the Israelis do when Palestinians are accused of violence, I didn’t see that they closed down the entire settlement from which these people came, Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former Palestinian negotiator, said”.
A court charged two Israelis on Sunday over a firebomb attack past year that led to the deaths of a Palestinian couple and their toddler, the Israeli judiciary said.
The attack was condemned across the Israeli political spectrum, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged “zero tolerance” in the fight to bring the assailants to justice. Both attackers were shot and killed at the scene. The unsolved nature of the case helped fuel the current wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Most of the 21 Israelis who have died since October were killed by Palestinians in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks.
At least 145 Palestinians, including children and women, have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of the wave of violence. Most of the others were killed in clashes with security forces.
Palestinians accuse Israel of waging an aggressive campaign to “Judaize” the city of Jerusalem with the aim of effacing its Arab and Islamic identity and ultimately driving out its Palestinian inhabitants. The Palestinians say it is rooted in frustrations stemming from almost five decades of Israeli occupation.
JERUSALEM (AP) – A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli woman in Jerusalem before being shot and wounded on Monday, police said, the latest in a series of attacks in recent months. She was moderately wounded and troops were searching for the shooter.
He said the main suspect was connected to several other attacks, including the burning of a church in Jerusalem, two attacks in another village, the torching of a Palestinian taxi and the arson of a storage room in a Palestinian home. “They would not have launched an investigation were it not for the global pressure on them”, he said.
Nasser Dawabsheh, Saad’s brother, said the indictments were not enough.
“Israel takes a strong line against terrorism regardless of who the perpetrators are”, he said. “And the government was not serious in preventing it and is not serious in pursuing the killers”.
Violence since the start of October has claimed the lives of 140 on the Palestinian side, as well as 22 Israelis, an American and an Eritrean.
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The body of the Palestinian, who has not yet been identified, was reportedly delivered to the Palestinian liaison office in Bethlehem.
