Extremist sentenced for attack on Palestinians

JERUSALEM — An Israeli court on Monday handed down three life sentences to a Jewish extremist convicted in a 2015 arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents.

The Lod District Court found Amiram BenUliel, a Jewish settler, guilty of murder in May for the killing of 18monthold Ali Dawabsheh by firebombing his home in the West Bank village of Duma.

The toddler’s mother, Riham, and father, Saad, later died of their wounds. Ali’s 4yearold brother Ahmad survived the attack.

The court said BenUliel’s “actions were meticulously planned, and stemmed from the radical ideology he held, and racism.”

The 2015 arson attack came amid a wave of vigilante attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by suspected Jewish extremists. The deadly firebombing in Duma touched a particularly sensitive nerve, drawing condemnation from across Israel’s political spectrum.

Critics, however, noted that lesser nondeadly 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 doublestandard, where Palestinian suspects 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.

“What will the court’s decision give me? What will it give to Ahmad?” the child’s grandfather, Hussein Dawabsheh, told reporters outside the courtroom on Monday. “It won’t return anything to him.”

The convicted man’s wife, Orian BenUliel, told reporters after the sentencing that “the judges didn’t seek justice or truth.” She said the family would appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court.

The Shin Bet internal security service had said BenUliel confessed to planning and carrying out the attack, and that two others were accessories. It said he claimed the arson was in retaliation for the killing of an Israeli by Palestinians a month earlier.

BenUliel belonged to a movement known as the “Hilltop Youth,” which has been known to attack Palestinians and even to clash with Israeli soldiers in response to perceived moves to limit settlement activity.