by Our Foreign Desk

ISRAEL detained two extremist settlers for six months yesterday after the father of the Palestinian boy burned to death in a firebomb attack last month died in hospital.

Meir Ettinger and Eviatar Slonim were placed under administrative detention for suspected involvement in an extremist organisation, the Defence Ministry said.

At least nine more settlers were rounded up in raids on settlements in the West Bank by the nationalist crime unit.

One of the raided outposts — illegal both under international law, as all settlements are, and Israeli law — was Adei Ad. It is close to the Palestinian village of Duma, near the West Bank town of Nablus, where the arson attack took place. The other was identified as Baladim.

Saed Dawabsheh died on Saturday of burns he sustained in the brutal July 31 attack on his home.

His 18-month-old son Ali was killed in the attack, while his four-year-old son Ahmad and wife Riham also suffered life-threatening burns.

Suspicion immediately fell on Israeli settlers after Hebrew graffiti was scrawled on the side of their house reading “price tag” — a code for attacks against innocent Palestinians ostensibly in revenge for militant attacks.

Israeli authorities called the attack an act of “Jewish extremism” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged “zero tolerance” — after years of indulging the most extreme settlers.

Following Mr Dawabsheh’s funeral on Saturday, protesters clashed with police, who fired tear gas.

Administrative detention — imprisonment without trial — has previously been reserved for Palestinians under Israel’s apartheid policies.

But Israelis have begun to criticise the draconian practice since teenage extremist settler Mordechai Meyer became the first Israeli to be so detained last week.

Yesterday Aharon Rozeh, a lawyer for Mr Ettinger and Mr Slonim, said: “This measure is dangerous for the entire legal system and for democracy.”