Dispute Over a Burial Reveals Palestinian Divisions
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Version 0 of 1. JERUSALEM — Inside the enormous tent erected for mourners in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, a Palestinian man on Monday gripped a microphone to plead his case. Fadi Alon, 21, shot dead the day before by the Israeli police, should be buried there, where Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, maintains strong support. “No matter where we bury him, it will be a national celebration,” the man said over the clamor of hundreds of angry, grief-stricken men and boys. “Is he just the martyr to his family, or to all of Palestine?” Many of those in the tent and hundreds of other young Palestinians outside wanted to bury Mr. Alon in his neighborhood, Issawiya, several miles away. “God is great!” they hollered, trying to drown out the man at the microphone. “To God, all praise is given!” Mr. Alon’s uncle, Rami, burst into tears. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he said. “The decision isn’t in our hands.” The public dispute over where to bury Mr. Alon was an example of the struggle emerging among Palestinians: which political faction will be recognized as the leader of the current fight against Israel. All sides wanted to lay claim to Mr. Alon as their martyr to burnish their case. “An iron first won’t work with Palestinians,” said Hatem Abdul Qader, a leading member of Fatah in Jerusalem. “They have tried it before but without success. It led to Intifadas.” Palestinians widely viewed Mr. Abbas’s speech last week at the United Nations General Assembly as tacit approval for defiant, violent attacks against Israelis — even though Mr. Abbas, who is typically cautious in his public statements, made no such call. “He gave a green light for the attacks, that’s what people think,” said Mahmoud, 26, a psychologist from East Jerusalem who asked that his full name not be used because he did not want the Israeli authorities to be able to identify him. On Monday evening, Mr. Abbas called for calm. In a statement released to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, he warned that Palestinians’ engaging in violence would give Israel a pretext for a further clampdown, and would undermine Palestinian diplomatic efforts. But Mr. Alon’s peers in Issawiya, the hardscrabble neighborhood just over the hills from Shuafat, were undeterred. They wanted a coalition of Palestinian factions to oversee Mr. Alon’s unexpectedly polarizing burial in their own neighborhood, even though Israeli forces had cordoned it off. Mr. Alon was fatally shot by police officers early Sunday after he stabbed and wounded a 15-year-old Jewish boy on a road outside the Old City, according to the police. A video clip showed Mr. Alon being shot, apparently as he was trying to flee, with Israeli civilians in pursuit and shouting “Shoot him!” Mr. Alon was the second of four Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since Thursday, when Palestinian gunmen killed a Jewish couple near a settlement in the occupied West Bank, leaving their young children orphans. The Israeli police had more or less shuttered Issawiya, residents said, making it impossible for Mr. Alon to be buried there. So they trekked over hills to reach Shuafat, a few miles away, where his father’s family lived and where residents pledge allegiance to different Palestinian groups. Residents of Issawiya and friends of Mr. Alon were upset that he would be buried where they could not visit him, take pride in his sacrifice or grieve his loss. If burying him in Issawiya meant confronting Israeli forces, leading to more violence, so be it. They said that Shuafat was a Fatah stronghold, and that Fatah leaders had sought to grab Mr. Alon’s body, and with it, claim that they had participated in fighting against Israel. “The Fatah branch in Shuafat wanted to have a martyr here,” said Aliyan, 22, a Issawiya resident. He insisted that Mr. Alon “is our martyr!” He was nobody’s martyr yet: By Monday evening, Israeli forensic officials had not returned Mr. Alon’s body to his family. Typically, in times of upheaval, Israeli authorities return the bodies of slain suspected militants on the condition that they be buried at night, with fewer mourners, to avoid more conflict. Even without the body, the matter appeared decided: The funeral tent in Shuafat already bore posters of Mr. Alon’s handsome scruffy visage, with Mr. Abbas’s face superimposed behind him, alongside the slogan, “Behind the president, there are soldiers ready.” There were large Fatah flags, and later a group of young men dressed in black shirts chanted praise for Mr. Alon, and for Fatah, and vowed to revenge his death. Youths from Issawiya bitterly noted that they had set up their own funeral tent, with the flags of all the Palestinian factions in their neighborhood, but nobody turned up. |