Meretz MK petitions High Court: Charge Dawabsha family killers

Meretz MK Issawi Frej petitioned to the High Court of Justice on Tuesday against Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Attorney General Yehudah Weinstein, demanding an indictment for the suspects in July’s arson attack in the Palestinian village of Duma, which killed three members of the Dawabsha family.

The petition came two months after Ya’alon reportedly said in a closed meeting with young Likud party activists that authorities know the identity of the perpetrators of the attack, but that they are not being indicted in order to avoid exposing intelligence sources in court.

Security officials said later that Ya’alon did not say that Israel knew the specific perpetrators, but rather the group from which they had come, Channel 2 television reported.

In the petition, filed together with lawyer Eran Lev, Frej wrote that Ya’alon’s statement shows that Israel is “evading its legal and moral duty to try those who committed this horrendous act.”

Frej called the government’s position unreasonable, disproportionate and discriminatory. The petition asserts that if the situation were different, with Palestinian attackers and Jewish victims, “it is hard to believe that…the State of Israel would refrain from taking steps against the perpetrators of the crime.”

Saad and Riham Dawabsha, with baby Ali. All three died when the Dawabsha home in the West Bank village of Duma was firebombed, by suspected Jewish extremists, on July 31, 2015 (Channel 2 screenshot)

The July 31 attack in the northern West Bank village of Duma killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha. His father Saad and mother Riham succumbed to severe burns soon after. Four-year-old Ahmed, who sustained burns over much of his body, is the sole surviving member of the family. He is being treated in an Israeli hospital.

Soon after the firebombing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forcefully condemned it as a “horrific, heinous” crime that is “a terror attack in every respect.”

He said he had instructed the security forces to “use all the resources at their disposal to capture the killers and bring them to justice as soon as possible.”