Arab Boy’s Death Escalates Clash Over Abductions
JERUSALEM
— The abduction and killing of a Palestinian teenager whose burned body
was found in a Jerusalem forest on Wednesday further poisoned relations
between Israelis and Palestinians and prompted international outrage as
the police investigated the death as a possible Israeli revenge
killing.
The
death of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, came a day after the burial of three
Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and killed in the occupied West
Bank last month. The killing of the teenager set off fierce riots in the
ordinarily quiet and relatively well-to-do East Jerusalem neighborhood
where he lived, threatening to ignite broader unrest and underlining
deep fissures in Israeli society.
The
abductions and killings of the Israeli and Palestinian teenagers raised
the specter of individual vendettas within the broader conflict, making
it all the more personal. Both sides, while angry and grieving, seemed
stunned by the turn of events, in which each side sees itself as both
victim and perpetrator.
While
Israeli officials said they were still investigating the death of the
teenage Palestinian, including possible criminal motives, the killing
followed passionate calls for retribution on a Facebook page named “The
People of Israel Demand Revenge” that quickly gathered 35,000 “likes”
and included pictures of soldiers posing with their weapons. The page
was taken down after two days.
The
latest killing seemed to set off introspection among many Israelis who
only a day earlier nursed their grievances over the killings of the
three Israeli teenagers. The justice minister, Tzipi Livni, reacted
harshly to the public calls for revenge and said if Muhammad was the
victim of a reprisal killing it amounted to “an act of terrorism.”
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Tuesday to hold accountable those
who killed the three young men in the West Bank, pointing a finger at
the Palestinian militant group Hamas. On Wednesday, after the body of
the Palestinian teenager was found in the woods, the prime minister
called on Israelis to obey the law, and asked investigators to quickly
look into what he called “the abominable murder.”
Given
the explosive atmosphere after Muhammad’s death, Israel found that its
options for punitive measures had been narrowed for fear of inflaming
the situation. Many Israelis engaged in soul-searching, recognizing that
both sides in this blood feud had suffered at each other’s hands. About
a thousand Israelis gathered for a demonstration in Jerusalem against
violence and racism.
Secretary
of State John Kerry, in a statement, strongly condemned what he called
“the despicable and senseless abduction and murder” of Muhammad. He
added, “Those who undertake acts of vengeance only destabilize an
already explosive and emotional situation.”
The
Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, 19; Naftali Fraenkel, 16, who also
held United States citizenship; and Gilad Shaar, 16, were abducted on
June 12 as they tried to hitch a ride home from their West Bank
yeshivas. Muhammad was forced into a car near his neighborhood mosque, a
few yards from his home in the Shuafat neighborhood before 4 a.m. as he
waited for his friends to go and pray, witnesses told his parents.
“We
don’t feel safe,” Suha Abu Khdeir, Muhammad’s mother, said as she sat
in an upper floor of the family’s stone house, quiet and tearful,
surrounded by women who had come to comfort her. “They took him from in
front of our home,” she added.
Outside
in the small yard, masked youths with slingshots were hurling rocks and
rolling burning tires toward Israeli security forces. The forces, a
short distance away on the main road, responded with tear gas, stun
grenades and other means, according to a police spokesman, who said
protesters had also thrown several pipe bombs.
A
half-mile section of the main thoroughfare, in an area that Israel
seized in the 1967 war and annexed in opposition to international
opinion, was carpeted with rocks and remained closed as clashes
continued throughout the day. Shelters at stops along Jerusalem’s
light-rail line, which runs through Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, were
smashed.
Tensions
had already been running high. During the recent Israeli crackdown in
the West Bank, six Palestinians were killed in confrontations with
Israeli forces and about 400 Palestinians, many of them affiliated with
Hamas, were arrested. Militants in Gaza fired more than
20 rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel on Wednesday. They
fell without causing injury.
Reactions to Death of Palestinian Youth
Palestinian and Israeli officials and a
relative of the slain teenager, whose body was found in a Jerusalem
forest early Wednesday, discussed the kidnapping and killing.
Video Credit By Quynhanh Do on
Publish Date July 2, 2014.
Image CreditMenahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Sitting
in an enclosed porch surrounded by male mourners, Hussein Abu Khdeir,
Muhammad’s father, who owns an electrical appliance store, said he had
spent eight hours with police investigators. Tired and unshaven, he said
that he had not been allowed to see his son’s body, which was at the
Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, but that investigators had
identified it by matching DNA samples taken from the saliva of both
parents.
“I don’t expect any results,” he said of the investigation.
Muhammad,
who was studying at a vocational school to be an electrician, was the
fifth of seven children, three sons and four daughters.
“I
am against kidnapping and killing,” his father said. “Whether Jew or
Arab, who can accept the kidnapping and killing of his son or daughter? I
call on both sides to stop the bloodshed.”
Muhammad’s
mother said he had been playing a computer game on a laptop with one of
his brothers, then left the house about 3:30 a.m. to meet his friends
for the dawn prayer that starts the daily fast during the Muslim holy
month of Ramadan.
Mahmoud
Abu Khdeir, the imam of the mosque and a cousin, said the other youths
left to get food for the predawn meal when a gray Hyundai pulled up and
its occupants forced Muhammad into the car.
The
police said they were reviewing images from security cameras along the
street; Muhammad’s father showed visitors photographs, on his cellphone,
that he said were from the security camera of a store near the mosque,
showing two young men walking on the pavement, who he said were the
kidnappers. Witnesses told him a third man was in the driver’s seat of
the car.
Youths
came to the house to tell Muhammad’s parents that he had been abducted.
They called the police and tried to call Muhammad’s cellphone. It rang,
but nobody answered.
On
Wednesday, the Ynet news site posted the full two-minute recording of
an emergency call one of the Israeli youths placed to the police from
the car in which they were apparently shot to death. After what sound
like gunshots and cries of pain, the kidnappers can be heard
congratulating themselves and singing.
As
funerals for the three were underway on Tuesday, hundreds of
extreme-right protesters gathered in Jerusalem demanding vengeance.
Chanting “Death to Arabs,” they tried to attack passers-by, who had to
be extricated by the police. More than 40 protesters were arrested.
The
two events exposed the extent to which parts of each side have
dehumanized the other. After the kidnapping of the three Israeli
teenagers last month, messages posted on social networks by Palestinians
celebrated the capture of “three Shalits,” in reference to Gilad
Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas militants in Gaza, who
was eventually released in exchange for 1,027 prisoners.
A
17-year-old created the Facebook group calling for revenge for the
kidnapping of the three Israelis, and an Israeli blogger, Ami Kaufman,
pointed to a photograph submitted to the Facebook group by two smiling girls who held a sign reading, “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!”
President
Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority strongly condemned the
killing of the Israelis. And Yoaz Hendel, a former director of
communications for Mr. Netanyahu, expressed dismay after the death of
Muhammad.
“It
is unbelievable how a few hundred racist Jews can cause so much damage
to an entire country,” Mr. Hendel wrote on his Facebook page in Hebrew.
“The results of the investigation into the death of the boy are already
unimportant. After pictures of the mob shouting ‘Death to Arabs,’ the
damage is done.”
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