Israel approves jailing Jewish militants without trial to resolve lethal arson

A 16-year-old died of her injuries after an attack by Yishai Shlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, at a gay pride event last week in Jerusalem.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called it a “brutal assassination” and said it was “a direct effect of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism”. He had lived in recent months in unauthorized Jewish settlement encampments in the West Bank set up by the “hilltop youth”, the Shin Bet said, using a term referring to radicalized Jewish teen squatters on West Bank hilltops who have been known to attack Palestinians and their property.

But Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said he doubted Israel would provide “true justice” and ordered his foreign minister to file a complaint at the worldwide Criminal Court in The Hague.

Smaller anti-intolerance rallies were held in other Israeli cities on Saturday night.

While Netanyahu and others have sought to avoid further escalation since the arson attack, no arrests have been announced. His four-year old brother and both his parents were injured.

The online news portal cited a hospital spokesperson near Tel Aviv, where Reham and Ahmed are being treated, describing their condition as life-threatening. Some have speculated that the attack was revenge for the demolition of the two buildings last week.

Israeli television reported that the office of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein had given permission for authorities to place three suspected Jewish extremists in “administrative detention”.

Israeli forces block a road leading to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound on August 2, 2015. The agency would not say if he is also suspected in the July 31 arson attack, but it has accused Ettinger of heading an extremist movement seeking to bring about religious “redemption” through attacks on Christian sites and Palestinian homes.

Israel’s security cabinet has approved the detention without trial of Jewish terror suspects.

Israel has been accused of abusing the procedure to keep militants behind bars without trial. In a July 30 blog post before his arrest, he denied the Shin Bet’s accusation that he leads an extremist group. “Perhaps we did not internalize that we are faced with a determined and risky, ideological group, which aims to destroy the fragile bridges which we work so tirelessly to build. I believe that the more we understand this significant danger to the State of Israel, the more we will be aware to confront it, and uproot it”.