Israeli Handed 3 Life Sentences for Killing Palestinian Family

By Al Jazeera

14 September 20

Court gives Jewish settler three life sentences for murdering a Palestinian toddler and his parents in an arson attack.

n Israeli court handed a Jewish settler three life sentences Monday for murdering a Palestinian toddler and his parents in an arson attack on their home in the occupied West Bank.

Amiram Ben-Uliel, 25, was sentenced by the Lod court following his conviction in May for the 2015 killings. He was also found guilty of two counts each of attempted murder and arson, along with conspiracy to commit a hate crime.

The arson attack killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh. His mother, Riham, and father, Saad, later died of their wounds. Ali's four-year-old brother Ahmad survived with burns on his body.

The settler had sought to avenge the killing of an Israeli a month earlier.

Ben-Uliel chose the Dawabsheh family home and another dwelling in Duma village, near Nablus, on the assumption they were inhabited and, before firebombing them, spray-painted "Revenge" and "Long Live King Messiah" on their walls.

The 25-year-old was acquitted of a charge of belonging to a "terrorist" organisation.

He first threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a house whose inhabitants were not at home.

Ben-Uliel then proceeded to the Dawabsheh house and threw a second petrol bomb through the bedroom window where the couple and their two children were sleeping, before escaping.

Ben-Uliel belonged to a movement known as the "hilltop youth", a leaderless group of young Jewish settlers who set up unauthorised outposts, usually clusters of trailers, on West Bank hilltops - land the Palestinians want for their hoped-for state.

A second, underaged defendant in the case entered a plea deal last year in which murder charges against him were reduced to conspiracy charges.

Ben-Uliel said Israeli investigators forced him to make a false confession to the attack.