Israel arrests suspects in arson attack on Palestinian home

Israel has arrested several people in connection with an arson attack in July that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents in the West Bank village of Duma — a result of an investigation criticized by both Palestinians and a U.N. official for its slow pace.

Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, said Thursday it had apprehended several individuals it believed were linked to a "Jewish terrorist" organization and that there were “concrete suspicions” they were connected with the summer attack.

Ali Dawabshe, a toddler, was burned to death on July 31 when a firebomb was thrown into his family's home. The 1-year-old’s mother and father, Riham and Saad, also died later of their wounds, while his older brother, 4-year-old Ahmad, is still being treated in an Israeli hospital.

"Specific suspicions are being examined about involvement in the abominable terrorist attack of torching the home of the Dawabshe family in the Palestinian town of Duma," Israeli police spokesperson Luba al-Samri told Palestinian Maan News Agency.

Reports of the arrests followed Israel's partial lifting of a gag order on the case, and comes a day after the U.N.’s special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, criticized Israel for how long the investigation has taken.

Palestinians have said the slow pace of the investigation into the murders is evidence of an unfair justice system, while noting that probes into Palestinians suspected of violence move quickly and carry harsher consequences, including home demolitions that rights groups say is collective punishment.

Although Israeli leaders widely condemned the summer attack and vowed to bring the attackers to justice, Israeli human rights group B'Tselem at the time dismissed their pronouncements as "empty rhetoric."

Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said in September that police knew who the attackers were, but prosecuting them immediately would be too difficult.

Many suspect the crime was a "price-tag" attack by Jewish settlers because the assailants sprayed Hebrew graffiti on the home, including the word "revenge." Price-tag attacks are violent acts carried out by settlers against Palestinians in retaliation for moves by the Israeli government they perceive as harming settler interests, according to B'Tselem.

About half a million Jewish Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. The settlements are illegal under international law and have been widely condemned by the international community, including the United States.

With wire services