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