Israeli right-wing activists protest outside the Lod District Court in the central Israeli city of Lod, on Sunday, as two Israeli men charged for taking part in a firebomb attack last year that led to the deaths of a Palestinian couple and their toddler, are being tried.

A court charged two Israelis on Sunday over a firebombing last year that killed a Palestinian couple and their toddler, in an attack that sparked condemnation globally.

The charges are the first step in a legal case whose slow progress rights groups have criticized.

They come more than five months after the pre-dawn attack on the Dawabsha family home in the West Bank village of Duma that killed 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha, and fatally wounded his parents. His brother, who was four at the time of the attack on July 31, was the sole survivor from the immediate family.

Amiram Ben-Uliel, 21, from the northern settlement of Shilo in the occupied West Bank, was charged with three counts of murder and one of attempted murder, arson and conspiracy to commit a hate crime, said the Israeli court indictment.

A 17-year-old, who remained unnamed under a gag order, was charged with being an accessory to committing a racially motivated murder.