Israel charges Jewish teenager over ‘racist’ killing of Palestinian mother

Israeli prosecutors on Thursday charged a Jewish 16-year-old settler with manslaughter after he allegedly threw a stone at a car in the occupied West Bank and killed a Palestinian woman.

Prosecutors announced the indictment for the October incident in a statement, alleging the unnamed suspect threw the stone in an anti-Palestinian attack "as part of an act of terror".

He was also charged with stone-throwing and intentional sabotage of a vehicle, both "under terrorist circumstances".

The attack was "based out of an ideological motive of racism and hostility toward Arabs everywhere", the indictment said.

Aisha Rabi, 48, died after the stone broke through the windshield of the car she was travelling in with her husband and nine-year-old daughter in the occupied West Bank on October 12.

The mother of nine was struck on the head and died later at a hospital in the city of Nablus. The stone weighed about two kilograms, according to prosecutors.

Her husband managed to continue driving and make it to a Palestinian clinic, prosecutors said.

Israeli authorities arrested the suspect on December 30. Four other suspects arrested as part of the investigation have been released to house arrest.

Israeli investigations into "Jewish terrorism" - as such cases are often referred to by Israeli media - are highly sensitive.

Israeli authorities have been accused by rights activists of dragging their feet in such cases in comparison to investigations into Palestinian attacks.

Settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is routine, with the UN reporting over 220 incidents of assault or damage to property in 2018.

Over 90 percent of complaints filed by Palestinians regarding settler violence are closed by Israeli authorities without an indictment.

Stone-throwing incidents implicating Israeli settlers have risen of late, according to Palestinian security sources.

Nearly 450,000 Jewish settlers live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which is also home to more than 2.5 million Palestinians.

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