Palestinian stabs soldier in West Bank, shot dead

The Israeli military has transferred nearly two dozen bodies of Palestinians it says were involved in violence over the past few months to their families in the West Bank.

A soldier serving in reserve duty was lightly wounded Tuesday morning in a stabbing attack at the Gush Etzion Junction in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, a manhunt in Tel Aviv for an Israeli-Arab suspected of killing two people in a New Year’s Day attack is ongoing.

The Revolt took shape in October 2013, Israeli security forces said, when its founders laid out their guiding principles. Referred to in Israel as “price-tag attacks”, such offences have usually been carried out in what the attackers say are reprisals for Palestinian violence against Israelis or government curbs on unauthorised building in the West Bank.

One attacker, Bahaa Elayan, opened fire on passengers on a bus in October, killing three people, Israel alleges.

He then hurled the second Molotov cocktail into the home of Saeed and Riham Dawabsheh – in which four members of the family were sleeping – before fleeing the scene, the indictment adds.

Saad Dawabsha’s brother, Naser, said he hoped the defendants would receive the maximum penalty, but was sceptical of Israel’s seriousness in prosecuting the case.

Attorneys for the suspects said the authorities did not have enough evidence to convict their clients and accused the security establishment of using brutal and unorthodox investigation methods, including torturing the suspects and holding them for days without allowing them to meet with their legal counsels.

“The Israeli justice system is now in the spotlight”, he said.

Jewish extremists have for years vandalised or set fire to Palestinian property, as well as mosques, churches, the offices of dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases. The so-called “price tag” attacks seek to exact a cost for Israeli steps seen as favouring the Palestinians.

“We will make sure, as we did at the beginning, with our request to lift the gag order, to bring to the knowledge of the public everything that happened in this investigation”, Hai Haber, a lawyer representing one of the suspects, told Israel Radio.

In a statement Sunday, a settlers group praised the indictments, saying it was “now clear that these acts were perpetrated by a fringe group of anarchists bent on destroying the State of Israel and the freedom and justice that it represents”.