Providing security a challenge

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DUMA, West Bank — Days after suspected Jewish arsonists hurled a firebomb into a house, burning an 18-month-old toddler to death and injuring his parents and brother, Abed Alsalam Dawabsheh, the mayor of Duma, pondered how to increase security for the West Bank town’s 3,000 residents. He had serious limitations.

“The only thing we can carry is sticks and lights,” Dawabsheh said. “We are not allowed to carry weapons.” Officially, Israel is charged with guaranteeing the security of Palestinian residents of the West Bank, but the arson Friday in Duma underscored the holes in the arrangement.

Palestinian police do not operate in rural areas, and Palestinians say Israeli police and soldiers are lax in their enforcement of the law when Israelis are the suspects.

The Israeli Yesh Din organization, which offers legal counsel to Palestinians, claims that of 1,067 police complaints Palestinians filed against Israeli assailants in the last decade, only 19 ended in a conviction. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said that Israeli law enforcement is cracking down on Jewish violence against Palestinians.

Complicating law enforcement efforts, she noted, are the fact that many Jewish suspects are minors and that Israeli police need military escorts to conduct investigations in Palestinian areas. Police issued a rare call for information on the Duma case on Tuesday. Israeli courts imposed a gag order on the investigation; no arrests have been reported.

To combat Jewish terrorism, Israel on Sunday approved holding Jewish suspects in administrative detention, during which they are not told the charges against them. Until now, administrative detention had been used only in cases involving Palestinian suspects. Critics say the measure is undemocratic for both Israelis and Palestinians.

The Israeli pledges to increase enforcement against Jewish attackers have given little comfort to residents of Duma. “Israel says they want to catch (the suspects). I don’t believe it,” said Nasser Dawabsheh, an uncle of the slain child. “The soldiers and the government of Israel support the settlements.”

The death inflamed tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. On Monday, assailants thought to be Palestinians lobbed a firebomb at the vehicle of Israeli Inbar Azrak, 27, who leaped out of her car in Jerusalem and is recovering from burns to her legs.

Ashraf Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, said the Palestinian Authority filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court about the arson in Duma. In Duma, Dawabsheh said he’d received no help from the Palestinian Authority for his neighborhood watch group, but with weapons prohibited, there’s no expensive equipment to buy.

For now, the village will rely on bands of unarmed young men staking out the sprawling olive groves on its perimeter. “If the settlers know there is just one guy awake in town, they won’t attack,” he said.

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"Providing security a challenge," Omaha World-Herald, 5 August 2015. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2015-014. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2015-014

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The olive harvest, and who the paper says owns the ground