THE MIDDLE EAST: Three Jewish militants from a West Bank settlement were given sentences ranging from 12 to 15 years by a Jerusalem court yesterday for trying to set off a bomb at an Arab girls' school in East Jerusalem in April 2000.
Shlomo Dvir and Ofer Gamliel were both sentenced to 15 years for attempted murder and for illegal possession of weapons. A third man, Yarden Morag, was given a lesser 12-year sentence because he co-operated with police.
All three are from the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin, near Hebron.
Dvir and Morag were spotted by a passing police patrol car as they were parking an explosives-laden cart outside the main entrance to the school, in the A-Tur neighbourhood, in the early hours of April 29th, 2002.
Police discovered that the cart contained two explosive bricks, cooking-gas canisters, oil and gasoline. Gamliel was convicted of having helped plan the attack.
The defence attorney for the three, Mr Naftali Wertzberger, said he would appeal the sentences.
He said that Palestinian suicide bombers who were caught before they could carry out an attack did not get sentences as severe as these.
In their verdict, the three-judge panel wrote that the three men "decided to commit a major terror attack that would cause many casualties."
"The defendants," they said, "intended a bombing that would injure and kill Arabs as an act of vengeance for the terror attacks against Jews."
Human rights groups say that at least eight Palestinians have been killed by Jewish extremists since the start of the Intifada three years ago.