Those attacks, which have been common in recent years, are known as price tag attacks because the extremists who carry them out say they make Palestinians pay a price.
Advertisement
Ali Saad Dawabsha died after masked individuals reportedly threw two Molotov cocktails into his family home in Duma, near Nablus early on Friday morning.
Family members buried Ali Saad Dawabsheh on Friday afternoon, as his four-year-old brother and their parents, both in extremely critical condition for major burns, are being treated at an Israeli hospital.
Thousands of Israelis have held protests against hate crimes, as the parents and brother of a Palestinian baby burned to death by suspected Jewish settlers continued to fight for their lives in hospital.
On Saturday, dozens of Palestinians were clashing with Israeli forces at the Jalazon refugee camp, where the funeral of Laith Khaldi had taken place.
With no arrests yet made for the arson, some Israeli commentators on Sunday questioned the resolve of security services which, when responding to Palestinian attacks, often round up suspects en masse as part of accelerated investigations.
“This is a direct outcome of decades of impunity given” by the Israeli regime to the extremist settlers who have perpetrated acts of terrorism, said PLO official, Saeb Erekat, in the statement.
Islamic Jihad’s Secretary General Ramadan Shallah, in a statement released on Saturday, called on “all factions of the resistance and military wings, particularly the al-Quds Brigades, to escalate resistance and to respond to this heinous crime”. Two houses were burned and perpetrators spray-painted the walls with Hebrew words, including “revenge”. “We will hold the Israeli government fully responsible for the consequences if the mother dies”, Mohammed Dawabsha told Israeli news website Ynet. Both Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack an act of “terror”.
Also on Friday, a Palestinian man was killed and another wounded by Israeli fire when they approached a security fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, medical officials said.
The brutal killing of the toddler was also widely condemned by the global community with the Obama administration branding it a “vicious terrorist” act the must be punished.
Bennett said Saturday night that while he was appalled by the actions of Jewish terrorists, he would not let the incident ruin the image of settlers in the West Bank. “A search operation has been launched”, said IDF spokesperson Lt. Peter Lerner.
Friday’s incident came after Israel this week demolished homes in a West Bank settlement built without prior authorization.
Advertisement
The attack could push the issue to a higher level of Israeli concern.
