Ben David as well as reenacted the grisly homicide for investigators, according to authorities and the two unnamed minors admitted to the offense.
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The court announced that the hearings for sentencing of the two teens, who have not been identified due to being minors when the crime occurred, would start during January.
“My blood is boiling”, Hussein Abu Khdeir, Khdeir’s father, told reporters. “This is a lie”, he told Israeli Army Radio.
Abu Khdeir’s murder was never labeled as terrorism by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who surprised his right-wing colleagues when a year later he condemned a deadly arson attack that killed an 18-month-old Palestinian as “a reprehensible and horrific act of terrorism”. However, the verdict in the case of Yossef Haim Ben-David, 31, described in court as the main instigator of the crime, was delayed after the defense submitted a last-minute psychiatric opinion arguing he was not fit to stand trial. Then Ben David lit the match, in accordance to Mr. …
Judge Jacob Zaban said the late timing of the plea was “against regular and appropriate protocol”, but still agreed to consider it. Both minors blamed Ben-David for planning the murder of Abu Khdeir and exerting heavy pressure on them to participate. The accused detailed the plans made in advance to kill an Arab, in retribution for an earlier murder and abduction of three Israeli teens near a West Bank settlement.
Ben-David’s verdict was also scheduled to be read on Monday.
Nonetheless, six Jewish Israeli suspects were arrested a few days later in connection with Abu Khdeir’s murder, three of whom were eventually put on trial.
Haifa University legal expert Emanuel Gross said, that Israel has a mandatory life sentence for adults convicted of murder.
Adnan Damiri, the Palestinian commissioner of the Palestinian security apparatuses and its spokesman, said the Israeli court’s decision in the case of Abu Khudeir “enables the murderers, by the help of the Israeli government, to escape from punishment”.
According to figures in a U.N.-backed report issued in June, 2,251 Palestinians were killed during the hostilities, which included Hamas rockets fired into Israel and shelling into Gaza by Israeli gunners.
One of them had claimed during the trial that he did not realize the three of them would kill Abu Khdeir while the other said he took part in strangling the Palestinian youth inside the vehicle and pouring gasoline on his motionless body.
Palestinian leaders blame Israel for the wave of violence, saying its continued occupation and settlement building along with a lack of progress in peace efforts have led to hopelessness among youths.
“When we try to claim that we are better than our enemies – and I think that we are better than them – we should look at this event as a mirror”, he said.
Korv was otherwise satisfied that the court determined unequivocally that all three committed “the barbaric and abhorrent crime of kidnapping an innocent person and burning him alive”.
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Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who sits in the Israeli parliament as head of the Joint List, said, “The state is sending a clear message of forgiveness and understanding when it comes to Jewish terror”.
