Killer of Aisha Rabi, Palestinian woman slain in 2018, sentenced to 13 years in prison

The Lod-Central District Court sentences the Jewish extremist convicted of the October 2018 killing of Aisha Rabi, a 47-year-old Palestinian mother of nine, to 13 years in prison.

He is also ordered to pay NIS 258,000 ($85,500) in compensation to Rabi’s family, the maximum sum provided under the law.

The individual, who was just shy of his 16th birthday at the time, was convicted in March this year on charges of manslaughter committed as an act of terrorism, throwing stones at a vehicle under aggravated circumstances as an act of terrorism, and deliberately damaging a car as an act of terrorism.

Rabi was killed after the youth, whose name is not disclosed because he was a minor at the time, hurled a large rock at the windshield of her car near the Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank. Also in the car were her husband, who was driving, and her 9-year-old daughter.

The youth departed from the Pri Haaretz yeshiva in the settlement of Rehelim, where he studied, accompanied by several other students, on the evening of October 12, 2018, according to the indictment.

The group arrived at a hilltop between the Rehelim Junction and the Tapuah Junction, overlooking Route 60 — the West Bank’s main north-south artery — where the convicted youth then hurled a rock weighing roughly two kilograms (4.4 pounds) at Rabi’s vehicle, resulting in her death.

The youth denies that he killed Rabi, but has expressed regret over the incident, the court notes.

In handing down the sentence, the court notes that the attack was an act of terrorism, making it a more severe offense and increasing the likelihood of tensions spiking in the West Bank between Israelis and Palestinians.

The court says, however, that the youth had been just 15 years and 10 months when he carried out the attack, and that he has taken significant steps on the way to rehabilitation since the incident, including various types of therapy, and has changed the environment in which he lives.

“The defendant cut short the life of a woman — a wife and mother of nine children, a daughter to her parents and a sister to her ten brothers and sisters, innocent of any crime — and this before the eyes of her husband and her (then) 9-year-old daughter,” a summary of the sentencing issued by the court quotes the judges as writing, who add that Rabi’s killing was “a criminal and cruel act.”