While Israeli leadership declared a crackdown on settler attacks in May 2014 following price-tag attacks on Vatican offices in occupied East-Jerusalem, little action has been taken since.
Advertisement
The attacks occurred hours after the burial of Ali Saad Dawabsha, an 18-month-old baby who died in a fire started by unidentified individuals at his home in the Nablus-area village of Duma. They lobbed a fire bomb into the sleeping family’s bedroom which exploded into a fireball that quickly consumed the home.
The attackers, who are yet to be identified, hurled Molotov cocktails at the house and also spray-painted graffiti that read “revenge” and “long live the messiah” on the walls during the attack early Friday. Their jobs meant that they were able to have a home that was, by local standards, nice-it had an air conditioner and a microwave.
Two witnesses said they saw two masked men outside the house watching as the family burned.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials are wary of another round of violence.
“When you stand next to the bed of this small child, and his infant brother had been so brutally murdered, we’re shocked, we’re outraged”, he said.
Before Ali’s funeral was even over, shots rang out just a few kilometres from the village, hitting a auto carrying Israeli settlers. Critics say police have been slow to apprehend the assailants. Security forces arrested a suspect in connection with the incident. “This is the outcome of a culture of hate funded and incentivised by the Israeli government and the impunity granted by the worldwide community”.
The “Price Tag” group has been blamed for torching a number of mosques and homes in the West Bank in recent years. “No one is safe”, he said. “This must end”. (The best use of this moment, on the Israeli side, would be to question the utility and the moral sense of that policy, rather than its egalitarian application.) And there were already expressions of unhappiness, according to the Times, from Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman, about immediate Palestinian statements saying that the Israeli government had some culpability in this case. This is an act of terrorism in every respect.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said that the perpetrators of the attack would be brought to justice.
Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said: “The signs point to this attack being carried out by Jews”.
Ban urged all parties to ensure that tensions do not escalate further. “This is a clear terrorist attack”.
The attack comes on the heels of a report released by Amnesty global accusing Israel of war crimes against Palestinians during fighting in July and August 2014. “Riham was there”, he said. “This phenomenon must be uprooted”.
These two victims also were taken to hospital.
The newspaper described it as the worst attack by suspected Israeli extremists since a Palestinian teenager was burned to death last summer after three Israeli boys were kidnapped and killed. The violence eventually spiraled into what later became a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.
The death of the toddler was condemned locally and internationally with Israeli officials visiting the parents in hospital.
Advertisement
Laith Fadel al-Khaladi, 17, was reportedly shot in the chest by an Israeli sniper near Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah in the central West Bank. A brown couch was covered in white ash as charred debris lay strewn around the property.
