Thursday, July 3, 2014

Teenagers’ Deaths Raise Fears of Shift From Political Struggle to Blood Feud

Teenagers’ Deaths Raise Fears of Shift From Political Struggle to Blood Feud

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Israeli said it had launched 15 airstrikes against sites in Gaza that are associated with Hamas. Credit Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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SDEROT, Israel — In this resilient town about a mile from Israel’s volatile border with the Gaza Strip, the streets were empty on Thursday but the residents expressed defiance as Israeli troops massed around Gaza after a barrage of rockets including three that hit homes here.
“We need to finish them off before they finish us off,” said Avichai Jorno, 34, whose bedroom was littered with debris and bathroom was destroyed by an unexploded rocket.
In Shuafat, the East Jerusalem neighborhood where a Palestinian teenager was kidnapped and killed the day before, streets strewn with remnants of Wednesday’s violent protests were mostly quiet, too, but for a smallish clash with Israeli soldiers. And the boy’s family was also defiant, calling on the Israeli authorities to declare the attack an act of revenge by Jews for last month’s abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers, not the result of a family dispute.
“We want a written paper from the Israeli government saying the crime was committed on a national background, and we want the Israeli government to condemn this crime,” Ishak Abu Khdeir, the victim’s uncle, told reporters.
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Mood in Israel After Kidnappings

Mood in Israel After Kidnappings

Israelis and Palestinians are caught in another cycle of violence with little hope for a political solution.
Video Credit By Mona El-Naggar and Tamir Elterman on Publish Date July 3, 2014. Image CreditMohammed Ballas/Associated Press
A familiar sense of foreboding engulfed Israelis and Palestinians, with both preparing for the possibility of another of Israel’s periodic military blitzes on Gaza, and with growing worry about a potential third intifada, or uprising, in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
But two months after the collapse of the latest round of peace negotiations, there was also a new kind of fear bubbling, a sense that these brutal crimes against young people — and the hate-laced social media campaigns surrounding them — had revealed an alarming depth of demonization and distrust on both sides.
“It could be a shift in the nature of the conflict, from political struggle to blood feud,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University. “It’s no more the Palestinian possible state vis-à-vis the Israeli state; it’s kind of two peoples entangled in cycles of vengeance.”
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A spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas at news conference in Gaza City on Thursday. There have been conflicting accounts about the group's willingness to convince militants to hold their fire. Credit Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and analyst, said Israel’s aggressive crackdown on the West Bank — with hundreds of homes searched, mostly in cities supposedly under Palestinian control — had left “an overwhelming feeling of just this great vulnerability.”
“A lot of the problem with this place is that compassion has become quite selective,” said Ms. Buttu, who is a citizen of Israel but lives mainly in Ramallah. “I hate to say this, but all of the ingredients are there for things to get worse.”
The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday sentenced four recent recruits to 10 days in military jail for joining a Facebook revenge campaign by posting pictures of themselves with signs urging Israel’s prime minister to “let us terminate the terrorists.”
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Israeli-Palestinian Clashes Escalate

Israeli-Palestinian Clashes Escalate

Clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters continued in East Jerusalem as tensions remained high over the deaths of four teenagers.
Publish Date July 3, 2014. Image CreditRina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
After nearly three weeks of intense activity in the West Bank, Israel’s military on Thursday turned toward Gaza, where the daily exchange of rockets answered by airstrikes threatened to explode into a full-scale operation.
With more than 40 rockets fired toward Israel in 24 hours, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said troops were mobilizing around Gaza “to serve defensive positions and forward preparations.” But he repeatedly said that “we have no interest in escalation,” and said Gaza’s fate was in the hands of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that dominates there and that Israel blames for the kidnap-murder of its three teenagers.
“Our activities on the ground are in direct relation to what Hamas has been dealing out,” Colonel Lerner said. “We don’t want to take it further, but we will be prepared for developments.”
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In Sderot, Israel, a man looked at a home that was damaged by a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza. Credit Abir Sultan/European Pressphoto Agency
Hamas political leaders, too, have said they are not interested in escalation, but that they are having trouble persuading other militias to hold their fire, especially with Wednesday’s discovery of the burned body of the 16-year-old from Shuafat, Muhammad Abu Khdeir.
After a meeting of the Gaza factions on Thursday afternoon, masked men from the Hamas military wing declared themselves “ready for all possibilities.” Thirteen rockets hit Israel as night fell.
“We monitor the barbaric and brutal aggression by the enemy’s army in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” a Hamas fighter said through a kaffiyeh covering all but his eyes. “We promise to turn your settlements, posts, the targets that you expect and those you don’t expect into a burning coal if your leadership makes any stupid step.”
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The people of Sderot, where the first crude Qassam rockets made in Gaza fell 13 years ago, were preparing for another round, but were skeptical that Israel would take strong action. “It’s a waste of fuel,” Itzik Biton, who owns a falafel store, said of the mobilization. “They won’t do anything.”
“We were born here and we will die here,” Mr. Biton, 43, added. “The question is whether we will die of old age or from a Qassam.”
Ministers and Parliament members, insurance assessors and reporters visited Sderot, but local residents were scarce. In the midafternoon heat, a half-dozen children had the public pool — reopened this week after years’ closed for security reasons and then renovations — to themselves.
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An Israeli woman inspected the damage to a home in the border town of Sderot on Thursday after Palestinian militants fired rockets there. Credit Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Jorno’s wife, Tami, said that when the rocket alert sounded at 8 a.m. Thursday, she and a friend rushed their three small children into the safe room off the kitchen and almost immediately heard two booms. She went out to her garden with its ornamental gnomes and toadstools, sensing that one had landed close by. Neighbors pointed out the hole in her stucco wall.
Later, bomb disposal experts carried the unexploded rocket away. Debris littered the Jornos’ flowery summer bedcovers.
Shuafat was also riddled with detritus from Wednesday’s clashes. Smashed traffic lights. Overturned garbage bins. A vegetable stand in an unfinished two-story building blackened by firebombs protesters had hurled at soldiers using it as a staging area.
“Resistance lives on,” read a splash of fresh red graffiti. Next to Muhammad’s name, another said, “Palestine is free and Arab.” Most were in Arabic, but one, in Hebrew, said, “Death to Jews.”
Around 5 p.m., some 300 Palestinians threw stones at soldiers, who responded with stun grenades. But most of the day was quiet, as mourners congregated at a canopy in front of Muhammad’s house and adorned with his picture, waiting for word on when the autopsy would be complete. The funeral was expected after Friday’s noon prayer.
“It will not be a normal funeral,” said a cousin, Said Abu Khdeir, who owns a restaurant in the neighborhood. “It will be a wedding for a martyr.”
A police spokesman said the investigation was continuing and had not yet determined whether the killing was revenge or a nonpolitical crime. Wasem Abu Khdeir, 17, a cousin of Muhammad’s, said the police had questioned four of his other teenage cousins for hours on Thursday about whether they had anything to do with the crime.
Tamir Lion, an anthropologist who focuses on youth and combat soldiers, said on Israel Radio, “The state of Israel in recent years is looking for its ethos — that is to say, ‘Where are we going.’ 
“When there is no ethos, and it does not matter why, you always withdraw to the most primitive ethos — us and them,” he added. “It becomes a group that defines itself not as what it is, but what it hates.”

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