Dawabsha family hoping for progress in arson case

The grandfather of a Palestinian boy whose parents and baby brother were killed in a firebombing attack in the West Bank said he hoped reports of a major breakthrough in a Jewish terrorism case referred to the investigation into that attack.

On Monday there was a widely reported “major development” in an ongoing investigation into an incident of Jewish extremist violence, although police and the Shin Bet security service have been reticent as to the case in question.

“We hope that the developments in the terror investigation are connected to us,” Hussein Dawabsha told the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth from his post near his grandson Ahmed Dawabsha’s hospital bed at the Sheba medical center outside Tel Aviv

“No one in the security services has updated us if the latest developments are connected to us; I get all the information that I have from the media,” he added.

The July firebombing attack on the Dawabsha family in the village of Duma killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha and mortally injured his parents, who died in the following weeks.

The deaths prompted outrage among Palestinians, in Israel and throughout the international community. Ali’s brother, Ahmed, who was 4 at the time, survived the attack, which Israeli security forces said was carried out by Jewish extremists.

The Duma attack has been at the center of a joint Israel Police and Shin Bet security service operation, but critics have taken Israeli officials to task for failing to produce an indictment in the case thus far, pointing to it as proof of a double standard for Jewish and Palestinian terrorists.

Ahmed Dawabsha underwent a series of operations earlier this week and in two weeks is expected to be moved to rehabilitation.

Raz Somech, head of the children’s ward at the Sheba medical center, told Yedioth that his patient was undergoing treatments to renew his skin.