Murdered Palestinian family's relatives doubt Israeli justice

Relatives of a Palestinian couple killed with their toddler in a July arson attack said Friday they have no faith in Israeli pledges of justice, despite arrests of Jewish suspects.

Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service said on Thursday it was holding several young men "suspected of belonging to a Jewish terror organisation and carrying out terror attacks", including the torching of the Dawabsha family's home in the occupied West Bank village of Duma.

"I want to hope that this is true," the child's grandmother Rahib Zeti, 65, told AFP.

"But even if (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu says he's caught them, what will they do to them?"

The attack killed 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha on the spot.

His parents Riham and Saad died in hospital later from their burns and his four-year-old brother Ahmed is still being treated.
It is considered one of the factors behind a wave of violence since October that has claimed the lives of more than 120 people so far, including 108 Palestinians and 17 Israelis.

Graffiti left at the site,  witness reports and the proximity of Israeli settlements led suspicions to fall immediately on Jewish extremists.

Mohammed Dawabsha, 68, the children's grandfather, voiced his distrust of Israeli authorities.

"They are liars," he told AFP.

He spoke of Monday's court ruling in the case of the burning alive of a Palestinian teenager last year.

It found two Israelis guilty of kidnapping and murdering Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, but deferred a decision on the main suspect, pending psychiatric evaluation.

A poster of Abu Khdeir hung Friday on the Dawabsha home, still badly damaged and blackened by soot.

Duma residents, like many West Bank villagers, say they live in fear of settlers and say they are protected neither by Palestinian security, which is only allowed to operate in 40 percent of the occupied territory, or by Israel, which controls the majority.

Source: AFP