Six weeks after settlers torched a Palestinian home in the West Bank hamlet of Duma killing three—Ali Dawabshe, 18-months, Sa’ad Dawabshe, 32, and Riham Dawabshe 27—no one has been charged for the crime. Now, Israel’s defense minister says he knows who is behind the arson attack but is refusing to indict, because doing so could expose government interlligence sources.
Thousands poured into the West Bank hamlet of Duma for a third funeral over the past five weeks, this time mourning Riham Dawabshe who died Sunday on her 27th birthday from injuries sustained during a settler arson attack on her home on July 31st. Riham’s youngest son, 18-month year old Ali Dawabshe was killed in the blasts that destroyed two apartments. Her husband Sa’ad Dawabshe, 32, died last month on the couple’s anniversary, also from wounds inflicted during the firebombing. Although the arsonists left a graffiti tag in Hebrew indicating the killings were a nationalist crime, to date Israel has not charged anyone with the murders.
Riham Dawabshe, 26, the mother of 18-month old Ali who was killed in a settler arson attack on her home in a remote Palestinian village five weeks ago, died Sunday night from injuries sustained in the firebombing. Riham had third degree burns on 90-percent of her body, and has been in a coma and on a ventilator since the July 31st attack.
“The pictures went viral. That’s important,” Ahed Tamimi, 14, tells Allison Deger, “so the world can see what happens.” Ahed is the blond teen on the far left of the widely-published photo of a violent confrontation between Palestinian women and children, and an Israeli soldier in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. “When you see someone in your family in danger you don’t have time to think about it,” Nour Tamimi, 16, explains. “He was beating me and I saw his hand on my face, so I bit him,” the soft-spoken Ahed added.
Israel’s culture minister Miri Regev says Palestinian women protesters who tackled an Israeli soldier beating a boy in occupied Nabi Saleh on Friday should have been fired on. Even as the world is shocked by the Israeli soldier’s conduct.
Mahmoud Abbas, the 80-year old chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) whose rule over the post-Oslo post-Intifada years has come under increasing criticism for stalemate in ending Israel’s occupation, and a glaring lack of elections for more than ten years, will resign next month. Yet the move may be a gambit, aimed at reshuffling top positions in his government so as to oust his chief rivals.
In a blitz tour of Israel and one Israeli settlement to fundraise and campaign for his presidential bid, GOP candidate and former governor of Arkansans Mike Huckabee managed one major gaffe, and doubled down views about Israel that are far to the right of any other Republican runner, and most of the Israeli government.
Bedlam stretched across the working-class Israeli town of Ashkelon yesterday after Israel reneged on what would have been a first medical visit by a Palestinian health official to Mohammed Allan, 31, a Palestinian hunger striking detainee hospitalized in the coastal Israeli city. For a second time in five days police dispersed Palestinian protesters in Ashkelon using force, and spraying heaps of putrid smelling liquid from a water cannon. This time, cloaking demonstrators, members of Knesset and Israeli bystanders alike.
A Bedouin tent was burned to the ground overnight in an apparent settler arson attack in Ein Samiya near Duma, the West Bank hamlet where a Palestinian baby and father were killed during a nationalist firebombing two weeks ago. The assailants spray painted “administrative revenge” on a rock near the enclosure, a reference to Israel’s recent announcement that it would jail Jewish terrorists without trail, a policy known as administrative detention. Known as “price tagging” the graffiti indicates the assailant’s criminal act was motivated to carry by their government’s decision to weed out extremists. Last week nine suspected Jewish terrorist were jailed without charges, yet they were all released within two days.
Hundreds of mourners from the northern West Bank poured into the hamlet of Duma to lay to rest a second Palestinian killed today after succumbing to wounds from a settler arson attack last week. Sa’ad Dawabshe, father of baby Ali Dawabshe who burned to death in the attack, died in the early morning hours in a hospital in southern Israel where he was being treated. His remains were transferred to his parents’ home outside of Nablus.