Israel jails five relatives of Palestinian attacker

Israel has jailed five relatives of a Palestinian who stabbed three people to death claiming they knew about his plan and did not try to stop him, the army said today.
A military court ruled yesterday that the father, mother, uncle and two brothers of Omar al-Abed "knew he intended to commit a terrorist attack and did nothing to warn the security services to prevent it".
Abed's brothers and uncle were sentenced to eight months in prison, while his father and mother received two and one months respectively, according to court documents seen Monday by AFP.
The mother was also found guilty of inciting violence after defending his actions in Palestinian media, a military source said.

On August 16 the Israeli army destroyed the family home in the village of Kobar near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Omar al-Abed sneaked into the West Bank Jewish settlement of Halamish on July 21 during weekly Shabbat dinner and stabbed four members of the same family, killing three.

Abed was shot during the attack and later arrested.
The attack came with tensions high over the sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The army said he had spoken of defending Al-Aqsa and of dying as a martyr in a Facebook post prior to the attack.