Israel on high alert after baby dies in arson attack

Palestinians blame Israeli government for policy of ‘impunity to settler terrorism’

Israeli and Palestinian security forces have gone on high alert across the West Bank to prevent a major conflagration after an arson attack blamed on Jewish extremists left a Palestinian baby dead with his parents and four-year-old brother fighting for their lives.

Israeli leaders went out of their way to condemn the attack, describing it as an act of terror, and promised to do everything to bring the perpetrators to justice.

But there were reports tonight that Israeli soldiers had shot dead a Palestinian teenager near the border fence in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials said.

Earlier, two assailants, dressed in black with their faces covered, entered the Palestinian village of Duma in the northern West Bank in the early hours of yesterday morning and threw petrol bombs into two homes.

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Baby burned alive

One home was empty but in the second building 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsheh was burned alive. His parents and four-year-old brother were rushed to Palestinian and then Israeli hospitals, all in critical condition with severe burns.

Resident Ibrahim Dawabsheh said he was woken from his sleep by people shouting for help.

“We found the parents outside with burns, they said there was another son in the house, we brought him out and then they said there was another boy inside, but we couldn’t reach the bedroom because of the fire. He was left inside until rescue forces came.”

Hebrew graffiti reading “Revenge” beneath a star of David and “Long Live the Messiah King” were sprayed on the wall, indicating the arson was another “price tag” attack carried out by Jewish extremists, who have carried out hundreds of similar attacks over recent years targeting Palestinians, and often churches and mosques.

It was unclear what the "revenge" referred to but it could be a response to the bulldozing of settlement buildings by the Israeli authorities earlier this week or the killing of a local settler, who was shot by Hamas gunmen a month ago in the same area.

Israeli president Reuven Rivlin and prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu both visited the Dawabsheh family members in hospital and Mr Netanyahu made a rare phone call to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

“We must fight terrorism together regardless of which side it comes from,” he said, stressing that he had ordered the security forces to use all measures to locate the murderers.

"A nation whose children were burned in the Holocaust needs to do a lot of soul-searching if it bred people who burn other human beings," public security minister Giad Erdan said.

The Palestinian leadership convened in Ramallah and called on the International Criminal Court to investigate the attack as a war crime, declaring that Israeli expressions of outrage were insufficient.

‘Steps beyond words’

“Steps beyond words also have to be taken,” Mr Abbas said.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the attack a “brutal assassination”. He said the Israeli government was “fully responsible”, calling the attack “a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism”.

Hamas called for a day of rage and urged people to attack Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Clashes erupted in the West Bank at a number of locations following Friday prayers and shots were fired at a settler vehicle. Israel poured extra troops into the West Bank and banned Israelis from hiking in the area.

The EU urged Israel to show “zero tolerance” for settler violence.

"The Israeli authorities should take resolute measures to protect the local population. We call for full accountability, effective law enforcement and zero tolerance for settler violence," a spokesperson for EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini said in a statement.