NABLUS, August 8, 2015 (WAFA) – Israeli settlers Saturday attempted to set fire to a Palestinian home belonging to a familyfrom al-Kaabneh tribe near the villages of Duma and al-Taybeh and adjacent to the Al-Mu'arrajat road leading to Jericho.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activities in northern West Bank, told WAFA that a number of Israeli settlers threw Molotov cocktails toward the home of Palestinian local, Mahmoud al-Kaabneh, however, locals managed to fend their attack and control the fire. No injuries were reported.
He said that the fire was difficult to put out as settlers have reportedly used a burning material that makes the flames grow larger when attempting to extinguish it.
This failed attack came only a week after settlers Set fire to a home in Duma, Burning to death a toddler, and critically injuring his entire family, including his father, who succumbed to his critical wounds early Saturday.
As anticipated by the Israeli human Rights Center, B’Tselem, following the Duma Crime, The center said that, “the clock is ticking in the countdown to the next arson attack, and the one after.”
According to B'Tselem statistics, in the past three years since August 2012, Israeli civilians set fire to nine Palestinian homes in the West Bank. Additionally, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Palestinian taxi, severely burning the family on board. No one was charged in any of these cases.
“In recent years, Israeli civilians set fire to dozens of Palestinian homes, mosques, businesses, agricultural land and vehicles in the West Bank. The vast majority of these cases were never solved, and in many of them the Israeli Police did not even bother take elementary investigative actions,” said the center.
“Palestinians are left unprotected not due to any lack of legal means, but because the authorities employ an unofficial yet longstanding policy of leniency and lack of law enforcement on violent settlers.”
“The fact that the Samaria and Judea (SHAI) Police and other law enforcement bodies have failed to solve these attacks isn't fate. Rather, it is the result of a policy expressed throughout all levels of the law enforcement system, in particular the political echelons, up to and including the Prime Minister.”
Commenting on the wide condemnations of the crime, the center stressed that “official condemnations of this attack are empty rhetoric as long as politicians continue their policy of avoiding enforcement of the law on Israelis who harm Palestinians, and do not deal with the public climate and the incitement which serve is backdrop to these acts.”
Following the Duma Crime, ‘Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein on Tuesday gave the Shin Bet Security Service the green light to arrest three right-wing extremists under an administrative detention order, after the security cabinet approved that use of the measure following the deadly arson attack in the West Bank on Friday,’ reported the Israeli Daily, Haartez.
In clear rejection of this Israeli measure, B’Tselem said that, “Headlines about administrative detention of Jewish Israeli citizens do not counter this. In reality, the life and property of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories remain unprotected.”
“After years in which the law enforcement authorities in the Occupied Territories have systematically failed to rein in settler violence, it is hard to expect change now, given that these forces are an inherent part of the occupation regime,” stated the center.
T.R.
