Israeli minister 'knows who started fire that killed Palestinian toddler' but no arrests made

Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's defence minister, has drawn criticism after saying investigators know the culprits behind a horrific fire that killed three Palestinians but have refrained from charging them.

Mr Ya'alon also confirmed that the authorities were convinced the July 31 arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma was carried out by Jewish extremists.

An 18-month-old toddler, Ali Dawabshe, was burned alive in the blaze, which is thought to have started after a Molotov cocktail was thrown through a bedroom window.

The boy's father, Sa'ad, died from his injuries days later. His mother, Reham, died this week from third-degree burns that covered 90 per cent of her body.

Mr Ya'alon told a gathering of youth activists in the governing Likud party that the perpetrators had not been prosecuted to avoid betraying intelligence sources. He also cited a lack of evidence that would stand up in court.

“We know who’s responsible, but we’re not revealing it so as not to expose intelligence sources.” Mr Ya'alon told the Tel Aviv gathering, held to herald the forthcoming Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah.

“We have a difficulty in establishing evidence. At the moment we are not prosecuting people so as not to expose the sources in court.”

The crime had been the work of a radical group with "an extremist world view" that had decided "to set the ground ablaze", Mr Ya'alon said.

Three known extremists have been subjected to long-term detention orders since that attack, while at least 10 other have been arrested. Mr Ya'alon told Israeli journalists that security officials had no doubt that the detainees were connected to the incident but lacked the evidence to charge them, according to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

His revelations provoked angry reactions from the Dawabshe family, opposition politicians and even one prominent Right-wing columnist, who all called for the perpetrators to be charged and tried.

“This statement by Yaalon that Israel is refraining from prosecuting the people responsible for the murder so as not to expose intelligence sources is not justified — Israel has to immediately reveal who the murderers were,” Nasser Dawabshe, brother of Sa'ad, told Yedioth.

Zahava Galon, leader of the Left-wing Meretz party, accused Mr Ya'alon of treating Palestinian victims differently from Israelis. "It’s difficult to shake the feeling that the defense minister would not dare to act and speak this way if the murder victims were Jewish,” she said.

Perhaps the most cutting criticism came from Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist usually loyal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, who wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth that "most Israelis have difficulty understanding why it is taking the security services so long to find and arrest these scum".

He added: "Mr Defence Minister, Mr Prime Minister, Mr Attorney General — please come to your senses and wake up. Don’t you understand what damage is caused to the State of Israel by this peculiar conduct of 'we know who the murderers are, but we have difficulties because of exposing sources of information'? People feel, even if mistakenly, that Israel is simply lazy and searching for excuses."