‘WE hold the Israeli government fully responsible for the brutal assassination of the toddler Ali Saad Dawabsha,’ PLO official Saeb Erekat said in a statement yesterday.
President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday that he would appeal to the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into the arson attack carried out by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank which killed the Palestinian infant.
‘We are immediately preparing the file that will be submitted to the ICC,’ Abbas told reporters, while also denouncing ‘war crimes and crimes against humanity committed each day by Israelis against the Palestinian people’.
The 18-month-old toddler was murdered in an arson attack carried out early yesterday by Israeli settlers on the home of Maamoon Rashid Dawabsha, in Duma, near Nablus, in the occupied West Bank. Erekat continued: ‘This is a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism.
‘We cannot separate the barbaric attack that took place in Duma last night from the recent settlement approvals by the Israeli government, a government which represents an Israeli national coalition for settlements and Apartheid.’
Erekat said that since 2004, over 11,000 settler attacks have taken place against Palestinian homes, cars, churches, mosques, trees and others with full impunity. Israeli settlers smashed the windows of two homes in Duma before throwing flammable liquids and Molotov cocktails inside to kill the infant, a local resident said.
Ali Saad Dawabsha, one-and-a-half years old, was trapped inside the house and died shortly after sustaining serious burns, said Ghassan Daghlas, a local official who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank.
His mother and father, Riham and Saad, and their son Ahmad, four, also sustained serious burns and were evacuated to a nearby hospital, Daghlas said, adding that their home was left completely burned. Israeli settlers from nearby settlements attacked and partially burned the homes, spraying racist graffiti in Hebrew across both.
Palestinian political factions strongly condemned the arson attack, holding the Israeli leadership fully responsible for the brutal attack and calling for revenge. Hamas said that the killing of 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha makes all ‘Israeli soldiers and settlers legitimate targets for resistance’.
A Hamas spokesperson, Hussam Badran, called for popular action in response to the killing and said Israeli crimes can only be stopped by ‘comprehensive resistance in all its forms’. He also demanded that the Palestinian Authority stop ‘chasing fighters’ and release all political detainees currently held in PA jails.
The Islamic Jihad movement condemned the attack and said the Israeli government is responsible for protecting settlers who carry out acts of ‘terrorism’. ”Settlers and the Israeli army’s terrorism will be faced by a Palestinian will that does not accept surrender,’ a spokesperson for the group said, calling for resistance against Israeli military forces and settlers.
Popular Resistance Committees meanwhile called for a ‘revolution of anger’ across cities, villages and streets in Palestine and said that Israel could only be stopped by force.
