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Palestine's Abbas declares 3-day mourning for latest arson attack victim

Xinhua, September 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday declared three days of national mourning after the death of the mother of a Palestinian toddler killed in a Jewish arson attack in the West Bank city of Nablus in late July.

The mourning starts Monday for Reham Dawabsha, a 28-year-old teacher, who was pronounced dead on Sunday night, spokesman for the Palestinian presidency Nabil Abu Rdainah said in a statement.

The father, Sa'ad Dawabsha, had also died a few days after the attack in which Jewish settlers hurled a fire bomb into the family's house in Duma village, setting it on fire.

The family's only survivor, four-year-old Ahmed, is still being treated for burns covering 60 percent of his body.

Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian official held the Israeli government responsible for the deaths of the Dawabsha family.

The "assassination" of the Dawabshas reflects the clear connection between hate speech, settlement expansion and the impunity granted to Israel by the international community, Secretary General of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat said.

"There is a culture of hate that has been developing in Israel by supporting settlements and Apartheid," a statement by Erekat's office said.

"Over one month has passed and the Israeli government has yet to bring the terrorists to justice," the statement said.

It called on the international community to protect the Palestinians living under the Israeli occupation, and to put an end to Israel's impunity.

"Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is following up the issue at an international level to hold Israel and its settlers accountable for their crimes against the unarmed Palestinian people," the statement said.

Official Palestinian statistics have documented more than 11,000 incidents of settler violence since 2004.

The Israeli government says it stands against what it deemed as "terror" attacks, but the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), an Israeli human rights organization, said extremist settlers were rarely brought to justice for such attacks. Endit