Israel settler accused of murdering Palestinian mum returns to his settlement

An Israeli settler who stoned a Palestinian mother to death has been allowed to return to the occupied West Bank settlement where he lives.

Forty-seven-year-old mother of eight, Aisha Al-Rabi, was killed in 2018 after being hit on the side of her head by a rock which was hurled by Jewish settlers through the windshield of the car in which she was travelling.

The rock-throwing attack by the 16-year-old Jewish Israeli, who cannot be named due to a court-imposed gag order, and four others took place at Za’atara Junction, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, as Aisha and her husband Yaqoub Al-Rabi were driving past an illegal settlement, causing Al-Rabi to lose control of their car.

According to the indictment, the suspect deliberately targeted the family car in October 2018 in the occupied West Bank in an anti-Arab attack “as part of an act of terror”.

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The suspect “held a rock weighing close to two kilograms, with the intention of using it to harm Arab passengers, out of an ideological motive of racism and hostility toward Arabs everywhere”, the indictment states.

Despite the teen being charged with manslaughter after being arrested in December 2018, he was released under house arrest after just four months.

Although Israeli law allows for the jailing of minors convicted of serious crimes, the law is used discriminately to jail Palestinian children, while Israelis are allowed to walk free – even if they pose a threat to innocent Palestinians.

Moreover, the suspect will be allowed to return to the West Bank settlement he lives in despite objections by state prosecutors. According to Haaretz, prosecutors feared the suspect’s potential “link up with extremist elements”.

Earlier this year, the murder of Aisha was recognised as a terror attack by the Israeli authorities, but they did not acknowledge her as a victim of terrorism.