Fatah leader lies and says Duma arson attacker died in Meron disaster

Official PA TV, special broadcast on the postponement of PA elections

Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “I am really happy, even though no one is happy because of what happened at Meron (refers to disaster in which 45 Jews were crushed to death during an overcrowded Lag Ba’Omer event on April 29, 2021 -Ed.), because the leader of ‘Lehava’ – ‘Price Tag’ was killed (sic., Bentzi Gopshtein, head of Lehava, a Jewish anti-assimilation organization, was not killed in the disaster; “Price Tag” refers to Jewish vandalism and terror gangs). He died in it. Because he is the one who committed the burning of the Dawabsheh [family] (sic., Gopshtein is not connected to the Duma arson attack, and perpetrators of the attack did not die in Meron).”

Abbas Zaki also holds the position as Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations

Duma arson attack - Two Palestinian houses in the West Bank village of Duma were ‎set afire by Molotov cocktails thrown through their windows on July 31, 2015. 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was murdered in ‎this attack, as was his father, Saad Dawabsheh and mother, Reham Dawabsheh, who both died of their injuries later. The ‎only survivor of the attack was the couple’s other son, 4-year-old Ahmad, who suffered burns on 60% of ‎his body and was treated in Israel. Israeli leaders and citizens from all sectors of society condemned ‎this attack, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that all ‎Israelis were disgusted by the crime, adding, “We will not countenance terrorism of any kind.” He ordered ‎the security forces "to use all means at their disposal to apprehend the murderers and bring them to ‎justice forthwith." Israeli Police has treated the attack as a nationalistic crime carried out by Jewish extremists in revenge for Palestinian terror attacks. In ‎early December 2015, Israeli police arrested several Jewish extremists who were believed to have been ‎involved in the attack, and in January 2016, Israel indicted 21-year-old Amiram Ben Uliel, a member of the ‎radical Jewish group “Hilltop Youth,” with three counts of murder, attempted murder, arson and ‎conspiracy to commit a nationalistically-motivated crime. Ben Uliel confessed to police that he carried out the attack in revenge for the murder of Malachi Rosenfeld, an Israeli who was shot and murdered in a terror attack in the West Bank. Part of Ben Uliel's confession was deemed inadmissible by a court on June 19, 2018, given that it was extracted under torture, and the court also threw out the confessions of a minor whose name remains under a police gag order for the same reason; the minor was later released to house arrest, and all charges against him of involvement in the Duma arson were dropped during a plea bargain reached on May 12, 2019. Suspicions have been raised that the arson and three other subsequent arson attacks against other Dawabshe family members are part of a family feud. The trial of Ben Uliel is still pending.