Israeli teen held over Palestinian woman’s death moved to house arrest

Thu 09 May 2019:

A Tel Aviv court has authorized an Israeli teenager held in jail over a Palestinian woman’s death to be transferred to house arrest pending his trial, the justice ministry said Wednesday.

The 16-year-old, who as a minor cannot be named, is accused of having caused the death of a Palestinian mother, Aisha al-Rabi, by hurling a heavy rock at the windscreen of her car on October 12 south of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. His DNA was found on the rock.

The youth, a pupil of a religious school in the nearby Jewish settlement of Rehalim, has been charged with homicide motivated by hatred of Arabs. Four fellow pupils were arrested alongside him and questioned at the end of December. The victim’s husband, Yacoub al-Rabi, condemned the court’s decision to release the charged suspect as emblematic of Israeli double standards. “If the accused had been a Palestinian, they would have demolished his home and left his family without a roof over their heads,” he told AFP, referring to Israel’s practice of destroying the family home of anti-Israeli assailants.

“I’ve never heard of a Palestinian minor accused of homicide being placed under house arrest,” he said.

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