With the attack perpetrated in the village of Doma, near Nablus, the Jewish extremists claiming to belong to the “Tag Mekhir“ movement— “The Price Tag“—have crossed a new threshold of horror. This time they did not torch a church, like the Tabgha Church (burnt last June) on the Sea of Galilee, built on the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus multiplied loaves of bread, or a mosque, like the one (burnt last November) in Al-Mugheiry, a village close to the Shilo colony, but they set fire to houses belonging to Palestinians. In one of these houses lived the Dawabsha family. Ali, their eighteen-months old baby, was burnt alive in the arson attack. His four years old brother Ahmed and his mother are now hovering between life and death.
Ths Israeli Security Services said they were not surprised by this escalation of violence on the settlers’ part. Last week, after the Supreme Court decision to demolish two houses built on privately owned Palestinian land, hundreds of settlers attacked the Israeli police forces intending to dislodge them in order to enforce court orders. Wishing to appease the right wing of his governement, led by its new muse, Ayelet Shaked, Justice Minister of “Ha bayit hayehudi“ (Naftali Bennett’s party), Benyamin Netanyahu announced he approved the building of 300 new housing units in the Beit El colony.
The time has come to end the settlers’ impunity and we hope that the authors of this last attack, labelled as “terrorists“ by The Prime Minister himself, will be soon arrested and severely condemned for this murder. The time has come to stop encouraging colonization which is the main cause of the deterioration of the situation. The time has come to end this cycle of violence in which extremists from both sides reinforce each other, and to resume real negotiations in order to end occupation and to save Israel as a democratic State with a Jewish majority.
