Israeli court convicts Jewish extremist in arson that killed Palestinian family

JERUSALEM: An Israeli district court on Monday convicted a Jewish extremist of murder in a 2015 arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents, a case that had sent shock waves through Israel and helped fuel months of Israeli-Palestinian violence, foreign media reported.

The court ruled that the Jewish settler Amiram Ben-Uliel hurled firebombs late one night into a West Bank home in July 2015 as a family slept, killing 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh. His mother, Riham, and father, Saad, later died of their wounds. Ali’s 4-year-old brother Ahmad survived.

“This trial won’t bring my family back,” Hussein Dawabsheh, the toddler’s grandfather, said outside the courtroom in central Israel. “But I don’t want another family to go through the trauma that I have.”

At the time of the arson killing, Israel was dealing with a wave of vigilante-style attacks by suspected Jewish extremists. But the deadly firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma touched a particularly sensitive nerve.

“This was an attack with racist motives,” said prosecutor Yael Atzmon. “The court ruled it as a terrorist attack and this sends an important message that terror is terror and the identity of the perpetrators is irrelevant.”

Critics, however, noted that lesser non-deadly attacks, such as firebombings that damaged mosques and churches, had gone unpunished for years. And as the investigation into the Duma attack dragged on, Palestinians complained of a double-standard, where suspected Palestinian militants are quickly rounded up and prosecuted under a military legal system that gives them few rights while Jewish Israelis are protected by the country’s criminal laws.

Nasser Dawabsheh, the toddler’s uncle, said he was convinced that others were also involved in the crime. “If it was a Palestinian, they would have arrested every one he talked to and demolished his house and convicted him in a very short time,” he said. “We are not relieved because we know that other criminals are out of jail.” Ben-Uliel’s lawyers, however, claimed their client was severely tortured and that was how his confession was exacted.