MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Shin Bet told the Times of Israel on Monday that the arrested suspect, Meir Ettinger, 24, was linked to an arson attack on a Catholic church in northwest Israel last month. Ettinger is the grandson of an Israeli-American far-right activist Rabbi Meir Kahane.
The arrest comes days after an arson attack killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh in the West Bank village of Duma. His parents and 4-year-old brother were hospitalized with life-threatening burns.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was reported to have authorized security officials to use the practice of administrative detention, or indefinite imprisonment, on the suspect in the Duma attack.
Other local media cited investigators linking the assailants to Israeli citizens who have torched churches, mosques and homes in Palestine over the past year.
They also said Ettinger, who was on Shin Bet’s list of most-wanted Jewish terror suspects, may be placed under administrative detention pending a court order.
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers are known to carry out the so-called price tag policy, or vandalism and attacks, aimed at Palestinians, Christians, Israeli security forces, or anyone who opposes their settlement of the West Bank.
Palestinian authority leader Mahmoud Abbas claimed the attack was a result of Tel Aviv’s ongoing illegal policy of Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Earlier in the day, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki filed a report to the International Criminal Court in the Hague over the Duma attack.
