The life sentence for murder handed down on Saturday to a Jordanian soldier who killed seven Israeli schoolgirls may have satisfied the governments of both countries, but it has infuriated the soldier's family and the families of the dead girls alike, writes David Horovitz.
Ahmed Daqamseh, who gunned down the seven girls when they visited the Naharayim tourism island on the Jordan River where he was stationed on March 13th, had been charged with premeditated murder - which would have carried the death penalty.
But the president of the Jordanian military tribunal which heard the case said there was no proof of premeditation, and that Daqamseh suffered from a personality disorder, from sexual frustration, and from other disorders which had combined to prompt his killing spree. Accordingly, he was given a life sentence, normally equivalent in Jordan to a 25-year term.
Israeli government officials, who had described the trial as an internal Jordanian affair, were clearly disinclined to argue with the verdict. Nor indeed, was the Jordanian government - sensitive to growing anti-Israeli sentiment among the country's majority Palestinian population - about to quibble. But both the killer's family and the relatives of his Israeli victims castigated the verdict as "political", though for very different reasons.
Daqamseh's wife, Fatima, denounced the judges as "tyrants, cowards and Jews" for having treated her husband so harshly.
The girls' parents, however, protested against the absence of the death penalty, or at least of consecutive life terms to ensure Daqamseh spent life in jail.
"I am primarily disappointed in King Hussein," said Ms Miri Meiri, whose daughter Yaela was one of those killed. When the king visited the bereaved families immediately after the incident, there had been a sense that the case would be handled with integrity. That sense, she said, had now been proven hollow.