Israeli ultranationalists (right) protest against alleged interrogation methods used by Israel's domestic security service Shin Bet on suspects in a fatal arson attack last July in a Palestinian West Bank village, during a court hearing in the case held on December 28, 2015. The placard in Hebrew reads: “The High Court turned me into an easy prey. I'm worried that the Shin Bet will murder my soul."
Israel has charged two Jewish Israeli suspects in connection with the arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents in the West Bank last summer — an attack that helped drive an ongoing wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
According to Israeli prosecutors, 21-year-old Jewish settler activist Amiram Ben Uliel confessed to interrogators that he carried out the firebombing to avenge a Palestinian shooting in the West Bank that killed a 20-something Israeli settler.
Prosectors say the arson attack was well planned: Ben Uliel carefully selected his target village, looked for homes where people were sleeping inside, and threw the firebomb through a Palestinian family's window. They say he planned the attack with another person, a minor, but when that unnamed suspect failed to show up at a designated rendezvous point, Ben Uliel carried out the attack alone.
Israeli leaders commended security services for cracking the case and vowed to battle what they called Jewish terrorism. Palestinian officials in recent months have accused Israel of dragging its feet on the case. Israeli police have a track record in recent years of closing most of their investigations into Israeli attacks against Palestinians.
Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, says the main suspect in the July arson attack is affiliated with a fringe Jewish extremist group responsible for other attacks on Palestinian and Christian targets.
According to Israeli authorities, the group calls itself The Rebellion. Its head, they say, is the grandson of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the late Brooklyn-born ultranationalist who is regarded as the godfather of militant Judaism.
Activists affiliated with The Rebellion, authorities say, do not recognize the authority of Israeli courts and Israeli democracy, and they hope to see Israeli rule eventually replaced by a Jewish theocracy. The group is also said to condone violence against Palestinians as a way to create chaos that would help bring about this new Jewish order.
For years, Israeli authorities have struggled to prosecute the perpetrators of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians. Israeli security officials say they the indictments in this latest arson case will be a watershed moment that will send a message to Jewish extremists in the West Bank that attacks on Palestinians will not go unpunished.