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Version 10 Version 11
Israel Mobilizing Forces Around Gaza Teenagers’ Deaths Raise Fears of Shift From Political Struggle to Blood Feud
(about 5 hours later)
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military mobilized troops around the Gaza Strip on Thursday after Palestinian militants there fired some 30 rockets at southern Israel over 24 hours, three of which hit homes in the border town of Sderot, causing property damage but no injuries. 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.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said that despite the mobilization, Israel was not interested in further escalating the violent exchanges with Gaza that have been building for more than two weeks. Overnight, 15 Israeli airstrikes hit sites the military said were associated with Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza; Palestinian health officials said 10 people were wounded, including a pregnant woman and a 65-year-old man. “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.
“We are moving, and we have moved, forces to serve defensive activities and forward preparations,” Colonel Lerner told reporters on a conference call. 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.
“The main issue is how Hamas is reading the situation,” he added. “We don’t want to take it further, but we will be prepared for the developments.” “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.
The deteriorating situation in the south comes against the backdrop of heightened tensions in Jerusalem, where the burned body of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, was found in a Jerusalem forest on Wednesday. Muhammad had been forced into a vehicle near his East Jerusalem home about an hour before his body was discovered, and the police are investigating whether he was killed in retaliation for the death of three Israeli teenagers who were buried on Tuesday after being kidnapped in the occupied West Bank last month. 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.
Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas, said in an interview from Qatar, published Wednesday, that the organization was also not interested in an escalation. But a Gaza-based Hamas leader said on Thursday that the group was having trouble convincing other militants to hold their fire. 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.
“In general, there was an agreement to calm the situation,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of internal politics. “We are communicating with the factions to stop them from firing rockets, but the justification is always, ‘Look at what the Israelis are doing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.'” “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.”
The authorities were also scrambling to investigate a possible third kidnapping Thursday afternoon, after a girl called a police hotline from near Maalot, a city in northern Israel, a police spokesman said. “She said that she was abducted and then the line went dead,” Micky Rosenfeld, the spokesman, said. “We’re searching the area. Helicopters are trying to track. We’ll see what’s going on there.” 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.”
Muhammad’s abduction and killing set off violent protests in parts of East Jerusalem that stretched into Wednesday night, and there were fears that his funeral could stir broader unrest. “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.”
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority had “been making extensive international contacts” since Muhammad’s death and would convene a meeting of the Palestinian leadership on Thursday to consider, among other things, joining more United Nations institutions, including the International Criminal Court. 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.”
“Violence will only lead to more violence in the region; it has killed all chances for peace,” Mr. Erekat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said on Voice of Palestine radio. “The entire world has condemned the killing of Abu Khdeir, but the world should also follow up. Why was Muhammad kidnapped, killed? Why are the settlers allowed to run wild in Jerusalem? Why can they take the law in their own hands? There is only one answer: because of the continuing Israeli occupation.” 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.
In Shuafat, the relatively well-to-do neighborhood where Muhammad lived, Palestinians from across Jerusalem huddled Thursday on plastic chairs under a canopy outside his home, waiting for the Israeli authorities to release his body after an autopsy. As the crowd of mourners swelled into the hundreds, members of the victim’s family announced they would not accept the body until it had received a clear declaration that the killing was an act of revenge by Jews and not the result of a family dispute. Later, though, they related and said the funeral would likely be Friday afternoon. 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.
“We want a written paper from the Israeli government saying the crime was committed on a national background,” Muhammad’s uncle, Ishak Abu Khdeir, told reporters. “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.”
Israeli officials have said they are considering all possible motives for the attack. 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.
“We are in a state of waiting and expectation,” said Muhammad’s cousin, Said Abu Khdeir, 45, who owns a restaurant in the neighborhood. “It will not be a normal funeral. It will be a wedding for a martyr,” he added. Another relative, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a 46-year-old English teacher, said, “the hatred has increased” instantly. “I’ve never seen such racism, even in the first and second intifada,” he added. “We are entering a very dark time.” 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.
After a quiet day, clashes began again around 5 p.m., with some 300 Palestinians, some masked, hurling stones at Israeli soldiers, who used stun grenades to contain the crowd. “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.”
The streets were already littered with remnants of the previous day’s confrontations. 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.”
Traffic lights were smashed and large metal trash containers overturned. Stones were still strewn across the asphalt. The first floor of an unfinished building where soldiers had huddled was blackened from Molotov cocktails. “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.”
The shops — Joulani Furniture, Abu Irmeileh Pharmacy, a local post office and a place to get aluminum window frames — were all shuttered. 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.
There was fresh graffiti: “Resistance lives on,” read one splash of red paint, in Arabic. “The martyr of the predawn,” read another. On one of several smashed shelters for the light-rail line that normally runs along the main road, the words “Death to Jews” were written in Hebrew, near Muhammad’s name and “Palestine is free and Arab,” in Arabic. 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.
In Sderot, the Israeli town about a mile from Gaza’s edge, one rocket penetrated the wall of a house that soon will house a small summer camp for babies. The rocket landed on the upper floor of the house but failed to explode; two mothers and their children had taken shelter in a fortified safe room and escaped injury. Later, bomb disposal experts carried the unexploded rocket away. Debris littered the Jornos’ flowery summer bedcovers.
Tami Jorno, who plans to open the camp, said she heard the crash of a rocket. 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.
“I went out to look in the garden,” she told Ynet, a Hebrew news site. “I didn’t imagine it would be in the bedroom.” “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.”
A total of 21 rockets were launched from Gaza after midnight, according to the Israeli military. Two were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, 16 reached Israeli territory and three fell short and apparently landed in Gaza. 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.
Tensions along the Israel-Gaza border have been simmering since the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers on June 12. Israel has blamed Hamas for their abduction and murder, conducting a campaign against the group’s infrastructure in the West Bank that has included raids on scores of institutions and the arrest of more than 400 Palestinians. “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.”
The growing intensity of the clashes in the south and the erosion of an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, which ended eight days of fierce fighting across the Israel-Gaza border in November 2012, have raised the prospect of another full-blown confrontation there. 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.
Colonel Lerner, the military spokesman, said repeatedly during the conference call with reporters that, “We have no interest in escalation.” He said the mobilization Thursday included a limited call-up of “tens of reserve officers” who would be assigned to headquarters, not to posts in the field. 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.’ 
He added that other troops — he would not even hint how many — “are taking up positions in the surrounding communities of Gaza.” “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.”
“We have no interest in deepening the conflict with Gaza — the absolute opposite is our interest,” Colonel Lerner said. “We do need to have the forces that give the substantial preparation in case Hamas decides to continue and escalate it. Our activities on the ground are in direct relation to what Hamas has been dealing out.”