EXTREMISTS CHARGED IN WEST BANK ARSON
Shin Bet says ‘Jewish terror’ group shut down
• Israel on Sunday charged two Jewish extremists in an arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents last July — the culmination of a drawn-out investigation into a case that has helped fuel months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The indictments came as Israel said it had broken up a ring of Jewish extremists wanted in a series of attacks on Palestinian and Christian targets. While Israel’s prime minister trumpeted the arrests as a victory for law and order, the charges drew criticism from Palestinians, who said they were too little and too late, and from the suspects’ relatives, who claimed their loved ones had been tortured by Israeli interrogators.
While Israel has been dealing with a wave of vigilante- style attacks by suspected Jewish extremists in recent years, the deadly July 31 firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma s parked s oul- s e arching across the nation. The attack killed 18- month- old Ali Dawabsheh, while his mother, Riham, and father, Saad, later died of their wounds. Ali’s 4- year- old brother Ahmad survived and remains in an Israeli hospital.
The att ack was c ondemned across the Israeli political spectrum, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged “zero tolerance” in the fight to bring the assailants to justice.
But as t he i nvestigation into the Duma attack dragged on, Palestinians complained of a doublestandard, 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.
In Sunday’s indictment, Amiram Ben-Uliel, a 21-yearold West Bank settler, was charged with murder. The Shin Bet internal security service said Ben- Uliel had confessed to planning and carrying out the attack, and said a minor was charged as an accessory. It said the arson was in retaliation for the killing of an Israeli by Palestinians a month earlier.
Yinon Reuveni, 20, and another minor were charged for other violence against Palestinians, including setting fires to two of the Holy Land’s most famous churches — the Dormition Abbey, a Benedictine monastery located just outside Jerusalem’s Old City, and the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. All four were charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. Another 23 were implicated in attacks, it said.
In a statement, the Shin Bet said it had thwarted a “Jewish terror organization” that dreamed of overthrowing the government and establishing a religious theocracy that would be headed by a king, rebuild the biblical Jewish Temple and expel non-Jews.