RESIDENTS of the Palestinian village of Duma in the occupied West Bank are forming voluntary groups to guard against attacks by Israeli settlers.
This is just two days after a deadly arson attack left an 18-month-old toddler burnt alive, locals said yesterday. The groups will patrol the village and its outskirts 24 hours a day, seven days a week to prevent further attacks by extremist Jewish settlers.
The Palestinian Authority security services said on Saturday it would do everything in its power to crack down on terrorist acts carried out by settlers. However, the PA has no jurisdiction over Israelis living in the West Bank. Violent acts carried out by Israeli settlers often occur in the presence of Israeli military who rarely act to protect Palestinian residents.
Samir Dawabsha, also the general director of the Palestinian ministry of local governance in Nablus, urged Palestinians across the occupied territory to prepare plans for self-protection. He said: ‘The Palestinian people, no matter where they live, are being targeted by the occupation and its settlers, and citizens should beware of treacherous attacks by settlers, and we will try to prevent repetition of what happened with Dawabsha’s family.’
Samir added that the parents of Ali Saad Dawabsha are still in a critical condition but that their four-year-old son Ahmad is beginning to show signs of improvement. PA security spokesperson Adnan Dmeiri pointed to the high numbers of terror attacks carried out by settlers, noting that 23 mosques and a number of churches were torched by settlers in the last two years.
‘Has the Israeli government handed a single sentence to them? Has the government demolished any of their houses?’ Dmeiri asked. It is a political issue, and if Israel was willing to arrest them (the perpetrators), it could have done that quickly, but the Netanyahu government needs their votes in elections, and this government is dealing with the Palestinians as election bargaining chips,’ the spokesman added.
The suspects in Friday’s arson attack have yet to be identified. Israeli settlers have carried out at least 120 attacks on Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the start of 2015.
• In a press statement, Islamic Jihad’s Secretary-General Ramadan Shallah called on ‘all factions of the resistance and military wings, particularly the al-Quds Brigades, to escalate resistance and to respond to this heinous crime’.
A Hamas spokesperson, said that the killing of 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha made all ‘Israeli soldiers and settlers legitimate targets for resistance’. Shallah addressed the Dawabsha family directly, saying: ‘With a heavy heart we received the news of the tragedy that the settlers committed against your family, the Palestinian people, and humanity, especially because the victim was a small innocent baby.
‘This crime revealed the truth of the hatred and savagery of the Zionist settlers against the Palestinian people.’ He added that repeated Israeli attempts to ‘erase’ the Palestinian identity should motivate Palestinians to act as one and fight to protect their land and people.
