Firebomb suspects remain at large due to ‘lack of evidence’, says Israel

A statement released by defence minister Moshe Yaalon contradicted earlier reports that prosecution was behing held up over security concerns, despite the attackers' idnetities being known.

A relative holds up a photo of 18-months-old Ali Dawabshe, who was killed in the firebomb attack in the West Bank village of Duma on July 31, 2015. Majdi Mohammed/AP Photo

JERUSALEM // Israeli authorities have not arrested the suspects in the deadly firebombing of a Palestinian home due to a lack of evidence, the defence minister has said, contradicting earlier reports that prosecution was being held up over security concerns, despite the attackers’ identities being known.

“There is a high probability that those responsible for the attack in Duma are part of a very extreme group of Jews that doesn’t recognise the authority of the state and wishes instead to make trouble and do harm to people,” Moshe Yaalon said in a statement released by his office on Friday night.

“Nonetheless, we still do not have sufficient evidence to allow us to apprehend the suspects in the attack,” he said. “But we are continuing to investigate, using all of the tools at the disposal of the defence establishment.”

Three members of the Dawabshe family died after their home in the West Bank village of Duma was set on fire on July 31 by attackers believed to be Jewish extremists who threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of the bedroom where they were sleeping.

The words “vengeance” and “long live the Messiah” were spray painted on the house, and an unoccupied house nearby was also set on fire. A witness reported seeing four men fleeing the scene toward the settlement of Ma’aleh Ephraim.

Ali Dawabshe, 18-months-old, died in the blaze, while his father Sa’ad, 32, died in an Israeli hospital a week later and his mother Reham, 27, died on September 6 from third-degree burns that covered more than 90 per cent of her body. Four-year-old Ahmed Dawabshe is still in hospital with second-degree burns to 60 per cent of his body.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Mr Yaalon had told youth activists from the governing Likud party in a private meeting last Wednesday that the attackers were known but had not been charged and prosecuted to avoid exposing intelligence sources who had helped to identify them.

He also said the crime had been carried out by a radical group with "an extremist world view" that had decided "to set the ground ablaze", according to the Haaretz report.

Three known Jewish extremists have been subjected to long-term detention orders since the attack, although they have not been linked directly to the incident, while dozens of restraining orders have been issued against other extremists “in order to prevent further attacks,” the statement from the minister’s office said.

Mr Yaalon’s reported comments to the Likud activists drew criticism from the Dawabshe family as well as Israeli opposition politicians.

"This statement by Yaalon that Israel is not prosecuting the people responsible for the murder so as not to expose intelligence sources is not justified – Israel has to immediately reveal who the murderers were," said Nasser Dawabshe, brother of Sa'ad, told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

The leader of Israel’s left-wing Meretz party, Zahava Galon, accused Mr Yaalon of treating Palestinian victims differently from Israelis.

“It’s difficult to [not] share the feeling that the defence minister would not dare to act and speak this way if the murder victims were Jewish,” she said.

However, some of the most scathing criticism of Mr Yaalon came from a right-wing Israeli columnist, Ben-Dror Yemini.

"Most Israelis have difficulty understanding why it is taking the security services so long to find and arrest these scum," he wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth.

“Mr Defence Minister, Mr Prime Minister, Mr Attorney General – please come to your senses and wake up. Don’t you understand what damage is caused to the state by this peculiar conduct of ‘we know who the murderers are, but we have difficulty because of exposing sources of information’? People feel, even if mistakenly, that Israel is simply lazy and searching for excuses.”