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Tension Mounts After Apparent Revenge Killing in Jerusalem Arab Boy’s Death Escalates Clash Over Abductions
(about 7 hours later)
JERUSALEM — The body of an abducted Arab teenager was found in a Jerusalem forest early Wednesday, fanning outrage among Palestinians and threatening to further escalate the broader tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Police were investigating the death as a possible Israeli revenge killing for the kidnap and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank last month. 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 father of the abducted youth, Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, 16, said the police had identified the body through DNA tests. 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 discovery of the body came about an hour after Palestinians said an Arab teenager had been forced into a car in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the police had erected roadblocks in the area to locate the vehicle. The body was discovered shortly afterward in a forest near the entrance to Jerusalem. Mr. Rosenfeld said the police were investigating both criminal and nationalistic motives for the killing. 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.
Palestinian leaders held Israel responsible, while Israeli leaders called for restraint until the facts became clearer in an effort to calm the charged atmosphere. 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 Israeli minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovich, urged residents to “lower the volume” regarding the suspicion of a revenge attack by Jews. “There are attempts to make a connection between the two incidents and we are still checking all directions,” he said on Israel Radio. “There are many possibilities, criminal and nationalistic, and everything is being examined in a responsible manner.” 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.”
The body found in the forest was taken to Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday vowed 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.”
Relatives of the abducted youth said he had left his father’s kitchenware and appliance store around 3:30 a.m. and was sitting on a wall outside the mosque with some other teenagers waiting 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 traditional predawn meal when a gray Hyundai pulled up at 3:45 a.m. and its occupants forced Muhammad into the car. Given the explosive atmosphere after Muhammad’s death, Israel found 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.
“He was kidnapped and killed by the settlers, and the police know that very well,” the imam said. The police said they were reviewing footage from security cameras along the street; the imam said they have been used in the past to identify and arrest Palestinian stone-throwers. “They are trying to say that it is an honor killing, and this is categorically not true,” he said. 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.”
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel “condemn the kidnapping and killing” of Muhammad “as we condemned the kidnapping and killing” of the three Israeli teenagers, according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Mr. Abbas’s spokesman, called on Israel to arrest the abductors and hold them accountable, WAFA reported. The Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, who also held United States citizenship, 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.
“The coming days, you can’t expect what will happen — the situation will get worse and worse,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, who works with the Palestine section of Defense for Children International. “The occupation and the cycle of violence should be ended to guarantee there is no further loss of life.” “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.
Mr. Netanyahu spoke before noon with Mr. Aharonovich, the internal security minister, and requested that “investigators act as quickly as possible to find out who stands behind the despicable murder,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office. Mr. Netanyahu called on all sides not to take the law into their own hands, saying, “Israel is a state of law and everybody is obligated to act according to the law.” 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.
As news of the killing spread, the police increased their presence in Jerusalem. Clashes broke out between Palestinian youths and Israeli security forces along the main road that links the neighborhoods of Beit Hanina and Shuafat. Dozens of teenagers, some using slingshots, hurled stones at the security officers, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. 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.
Shelters at stops along Jerusalem’s light rail line, which runs through Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, were smashed, and smoke from tires set ablaze hovered over the area. The police barred Jews from entering the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City to avoid rioting. 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 mortars into southern Israel on Wednesday. They fell without causing injury.
The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, condemned the killing of the teenager in a statement. 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 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.
“This is a horrible and barbaric act which I strongly condemn,” he said. “This is not our way and I am fully confident that our security forces will bring the perpetrators to justice. I call on everyone to exercise restraint.” “I don’t expect any results,” he said of the investigation.
Yishai Fraenkel, the uncle of one of the three slain Israeli teenagers, told Ynet, a news site, “there is no difference between blood and blood.” Muhammad, who was studying at a vocational school to be an electrician, was the fifth of seven children, three sons and four daughters.
“Murder is murder,” Mr. Fraenkel was quoted as saying. “Whatever the nationality or age are, there is no justification, no forgiveness or penance for any murder.” “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.”
Tensions have been running high since three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped while hitching a ride home from their West Bank yeshiva schools on June 12, and suspicion fell on Palestinian militants. Their bodies were found in a field in the Hebron area 18 days later and were brought for a joint burial to the city of Modiin, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, on Tuesday. 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.
As the funerals were underway, hundreds of extreme-right protesters gathered in Jerusalem demanding that the government avenge the deaths. Chanting “Death to Arabs,” they tried to attack Arab passers-by who had to be extricated by the police. More than 40 protesters were arrested. 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.
Even before the abduction of the Israeli teenagers, a spate of hate crimes had revived concerns about the so-called Price Tag movement in which right-wing Israeli extremists have for years carried out attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank and against the Israeli authorities’ efforts to curtail illegal settlement activity. 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.
The American State Department’s annual report on terrorism published this spring included Price Tag for the first time, citing a United Nations count of 400 attacks in 2013 and saying they went “largely unprosecuted.” 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.
A spike in incidents within Israel’s 1948 borders has caused further alarm: There were at least 20 such attacks in the first five months of this year, the authorities said, up from seven in 2013 and five in 2012. 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 sounds like gunshots and cries of pain the kidnappers can be heard congratulating themselves and singing.
Before Pope Francis’s visit in May to the Holy Land, a church and offices of the Vatican’s Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem were defaced. In April, the Israeli military took over a yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement that was seen as a hotbed of extremism after settlers clashed with Israeli forces dispatched to demolish illegal buildings in Yitzhar’s outposts. 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.
Last year, a special unit was set up in the Israel Police’s West Bank division to contend with the problem, and this spring Israel’s top justice officials considered classifying the Price Tag movement as a terrorist organization to give the authorities additional tools to crack down. 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.
But security experts say the Israeli government has long been lax on Jewish extremists for fear of alienating settlement leaders and rabbis or further dividing the nation. 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!”
Amir Peretz, the Israeli environment minister, said attacks like Wednesday’s “ignite the conflict” with the Palestinians “and portray Israel in an inappropriate way.” 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.
“We must uproot and denounce such phenomenon and we must deal with them strongly and unequivocally,” Mr. Peretz, a former Labor Party leader who is now part of the centrist Hatnua faction, said in a radio interview. “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.”
“This is now a battle over the character of the state of Israel,” he added. “A murderer is a murderer is a murderer, and he must be dealt with just like any other murderer is treated.”