Fire hits home of witness to fatal West Bank arson attack
Fire broke out on Sunday at the occupied West Bank home of a key witness to an arson attack by far-right Jewish activists that killed a Palestinian family last year.
The blaze damaged the home of Ibrahim Dawabsha in Duma, the same village where a July firebombing killed an 18-month-old Palestinian boy and his parents.
Israeli authorities were investigating the cause of the fire on Sunday.
Dawabsha and his wife were awakened overnight by thick smoke, residents said. Dawabsha, a relative of the family killed in the July attack, was treated for smoke inhalation, police said.
Residents reported that a window was broken in the house, raising suspicions that firebombs had been thrown inside - as occurred in the July attack.
"The window was broken from the outside and flammable materials were found in the rubble," Malek Ali, the fire chief in nearby Nablus, told AFP.
Another family member, Nasser Dawabsha, said he believed the fire was intended to "send a message to the family and the village: 'This witness must disappear'."
PLO secretary general Saeb Erekat said in a statement Sunday that "we hold the Israeli government fully responsible for the crimes in Duma" and said he was expecting "another sham investigation."
Those details had not been confirmed by the Israeli authorities.
"All leads will be investigated," Israeli police said.
The 31 July attack on a family home in the village killed 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha and fatally wounded his parents.
Five-year-old Ahmed was the sole survivor from the immediate family.
After spending months in hospital, he was flown to Spain last week to meet Real Madrid stars, including his hero Cristiano Ronaldo.
In January, a court charged two Israelis over the firebombing after slow progress in the case led to criticism from human rights groups and Palestinians.
The attack sparked global condemnation and drew renewed attention to far-right Jewish activism, including accusations Israel had not done enough to prevent such violence.
The Duma attack has been linked to a theocratic far-right organisation called "the Revolt," led by Meir Ettinger, the grandson of infamous far-right Zionist Meir Kahane.
Their purported aim is the violent overthrow of the current Israeli state – formed as they see it by secularists – and its replacement by a Judaic kingdom, in which the Al-Aqsa Mosque would be destroyed and replaced by the Third Temple and Christian and Islamic influences driven out of the land.
"The state of Israel has many weak points, topics which you walk on the edge of a tightrope in order not to cause a disturbance,” wrote Ettinger, in a manifesto called "The Kingdom of Evil".
“What we will do is simply ignite all those barrels of explosives, all the questions and the contradictions between Judaism and democracy, between Judaism and secularism, and not be afraid of the results."
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