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Worshipers return to synagogue; Israel begins razing homes Worshipers return to synagogue; Israel begins razing homes
(about 7 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Israelis joined in prayerful solidarity and dealt out harsh punishment Wednesday as worshipers returned to a Jerusalem synagogue where five people died in a Palestinian attack and security forces demolished the home of an assailant from earlier bloodshed. JERUSALEM —Israelis and Palestinians expressed fear Wednesday that their decades-old conflict was moving beyond the traditional nationalist struggle between two peoples fighting for their homelands and spiraling into a raw and far-reaching religious confrontation between Jews and Muslims.
The twin scenes — one in an enclave of Orthodox Judiasm and the other in mostly Arab East Jerusalem — underscored the widening cycle of violence gripping Jerusalem and the fears and anger that could harden positions on both sides. The threat -- perhaps more accurately the dread -- of an incipient but deadly “religious war” was expressed by Muslim clerics, Christian leaders and Jewish Israelis, one day after a pair of Palestinian assailants, wielding meat cleavers and a gun, killed five Israelis, including a prominent American-Israeli rabbi in a Jerusalem synagogue.
For weeks, Jerusalem has been at a center of clashes, protests and deadly attacks that began over one of the city’s major flash points: a contested religious site considered holy by both Jews and Muslims. “All of us are scared that there will be a religious war, that extremists from both sides will start fighting each other,” said Oded Wiener, an Israeli Jew from the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land.
Tensions reached new and volatile levels Tuesday after the worst violence in Jerusalem in years when two Palestinian cousins — armed with meat cleavers, knives and a handgun — stormed a synagogue and left a death toll that included three Israeli-American rabbi, a British-Israeli rabbi and an Israeli policeman. For weeks, Jerusalem has been a center of clashes, protests and deadly attacks that began over one of the city’s major flash points -- a contested religious site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The attackers were killed by police and Israeli authorities moved quickly to broaden the response. Jewish activists have been pressing the Israeli government to insist that Jews be allowed to pray on the raised esplanade, which also harbors the Al Aqsa mosque, the third most holy site in Islam.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu said the homes of those linked to recent “terrorist” attacks would be razed. Another senior government official urged authorities to go further and launch a full-scale military operation in East Jerusalem. In the first and second Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, attacks against Israelis were largely propelled by Palestinian political and militant factions and leaders. These days, security officials say most are carried out by so-called “lone wolf terrorists” who don’t belong to any organized group. In the past, Palestinian attackers often made clear that they wanted to end the Israeli occupation of what they consider their lands. Today, some relatives of the Palestinian assailants suggest the attacks are motivated only by perceived threats against Al-Aqsa.
Security forces made good on Netanyahu’s policies early Wednesday. In a bid for calm on Tuesday, Wiener and leaders across the religious spectrum joined in a prayer meeting Wednesday at the synagogue where the attacks took place. Weiner said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pressed for the gathering, which also included figures from each of Israel’s minority sects, including the Druze, Ahmadiyya, Circassian, and Christian communities, as well as a leader of the Muslim groups in Israel.
Squads of police and demolition experts descended on the fourth-story apartment of a Palestinian man involved in the October attack on Jerusalem’s light rail system that killed a 3-month-old baby girl and a 22-year-old woman. The attacker, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, was shot dead by police at the scene. But bitterness was also on display in the city. Sheikh Mohammed Kiwan, head of the Union of Imams in Israel, who traveled to Jerusalem from the north of the country, attempted to quiet tempers among the street outside the synagogue, where neighbors and friends of those killed had gathered to pray. Young students of yeshivas — Jewish religious schools -- confronted him, accusing him and all Muslims of inciting violence to kill Jews.
Israeli police hustled out members of the extended Shaludi family. They watched security forces topple walls, smash windows and doors, and even tear up the tile floors — essentially gutting the home. “We condemn all acts of violence,” Kiwan told them, remaining calm. “This is a house of worship. It is irrelevant if it was a Muslim or a Jew that was killed here.”
“Netanyahu wanted all this. He is happy now,” said one of Shaludi’s uncles, Amer al-Shaludi, who lives on the first floor. “But this will stop nothing. The cycles of violence will go on and on.” “Did you come to apologize? You are raising savages,” one woman yelled from the balcony of her apartment across the street from the synagogue.
Israeli forces entered the apartments of other family members in the building. Another uncle flipped through images on his smartphone showing beds overturned and drawers opened. Across Jerusalem in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, which rests in a deep valley at the edge of the Old City, Israeli security forces used sledge hammers and explosives to demolish the apartment belonging to the family of a Palestinian assailant who in October used his vehicle as a battering ram to kill a to kill a 3-month-old Israeli Jew in a stroller and a visiting Ecuadorian.
The home-razing tactic was common a decade ago, but Israel has rarely used it in recent years. The local imam, Sheikh Mussa Odey, predicted that violence will worsen, and he said that the seeds of the religious war were sown long ago.
“How many houses have the Israelis knocked down? Has this prevented a single thing?” said a Muslim cleric, Sheik Mussa Odey, who watched from across the street. “We have grown to hate each other,” he said.
All it does, the imam said, “is make people more angry.” Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Rabbi of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, said the gory photographs released by the Prime Minister’s press operation of Jews wrapped in their religious regalia, lying in a pool of their own blood at the scene of Tuesday’s killings, “returns us all to the nightmares of the past.”
Jewish worshipers, meanwhile, prayed at the synagogue in the west Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof. A day earlier, its floor was covered by blood-splattered books and prayer shawls. One photo showed the arm of a rabbis, wrapped in scripture-laden tefillin, lying in pools of blood. Rabinowitz blamed Palestinian leaders for “brazenly and shamelessly lying to them and trying to bring down on the world a bloody religious war.”
The gathering also sought to reach across religious lines to include members of minority communities including Christians, Druze and even a Muslim envoy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu promised Tuesday, after the synagogue attack, that the homes of Palestinians linked to recent attacks on Israeli civilians would be razed. Security forces made good on that order early Wednesday, when squads of police and demolition experts descended on the fourth story apartment of a Palestinian man involved in the October attack. The attacker, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, was shot dead by police at the scene.
“It was my duty to come here and show solidarity with the families of those killed and with the community,” said Mohammed Kiwan, an imam and chairman of the Council of Muslim Leaders in Israel. Israeli police hustled out members of the extended Shaludi family, and they watched from across the street, as security forces knocked down walls, smashed windows and doors, and even tore up the tile floors. The home-razing tactic was common a decade ago, but Israel has rarely used it in recent years.
He kept his calm as Jewish students accused him — and all Muslims -- of inciting violence to kill Jews. “This will stop nothing,” said an uncle, Amer al-Shaludi. “The cycles will go on and on.”
“We condemn all acts of violence,” he responded. “This is a house of worship and it is irrelevant if it was a Muslim or a Jew that was killed here.” He said the violence was driven not by Palestinian nationalist sentiment, but by Jewish activists and Israeli politicians who press for Jews to pray the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
Palestinians still refer the Har Nof neighborhood as Deir Yassin, the name of the Arab village they claim was stormed by Israeli paramilitary forces in 1948 in a deadly raid shortly before Israeli statehood. Israeli denies the Palestinians accounts. “It is our soul, it is our religion,” said Shaludia. “It cannot be permitted.”
“All of us are scared that there will be a religious war, that extremists from both sides will start fighting each other,” said Oded Wiener, from the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land, which organized the event at the synagogue. Odey, the local cleric, watched from across the street. Asked if the demolition would serve as a deterrent to other Palestinians who consider attacking Israelis, he said no.
“It is our role, as religious leaders, to be the compass and conscience of every person of faith and to highlight all injustices,” he added. “How many houses have the Israelis knocked down? Has this prevented a single thing?” he asked. All it does, the imam said, “is make the people more angry.”
At the Vatican, Pope Francis condemned the synagogue slayings and urged both sides to end the “spiral of hatred and violence and take courageous decisions for reconciliation and peace.”At the Vatican, Pope Francis condemned the synagogue slayings and urged both sides to end the “spiral of hatred and violence and take courageous decisions for reconciliation and peace.”
“To build peace is difficult,” Francis said at his weekly general audience, “but to live without peace is a torment.” But Israel appeared to be moving toward more aggressive actions, which seemed likely to provoke Palestinian outrage and possible backlash.
But Israel appeared to be moving toward more aggressive actions, which were likely to provoke Palestinian outrage and possible backlash. Israel’s public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, announced he would “ease restrictions” on Israelis carrying guns for self-defense. He indicated the rule change could apply to anyone with a gun license — private security guards and off-duty army officers, for example — and allow them to be armed even when off duty.
Israel’s Public Security Minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, announced he would “ease restrictions” on Israelis carrying guns for self-defense. He indicated the rule change could affect anyone with a gun licence — private security guards and off-duty army officers, for example — allowing them to be armed even when off duty. Economy Minister Naftali Bennett called on the government to launch a military operation “go to the source” of terror in the holy city.
Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett also called on the government to launch a military operation “go to the source” of terror in the holy city. “We need to move from defense to attack, like we did in Operation Defensive shield,” Bennett told Israel’s Army Radio, citing the name for the military campaign waged during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, more than a decade ago.
“We need to move from defence to attack, like we did in Operation Defensive shield,” Bennett told Israel’s Army Radio, citing the name for the military campaign waged during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, more than a decade ago.
“Go in with Border Police forces, make arrests, create intelligence channels, stay there on a permanent basis, not just when there’s a terror attack,” he added.“Go in with Border Police forces, make arrests, create intelligence channels, stay there on a permanent basis, not just when there’s a terror attack,” he added.
In a nationally televised address hours after Tuesday’s attack, Netanyhu blamed Palestinian leaders for inciting violence — making no specific distinctions between the anti-Israeli faction Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the potential peace talk partners in the West Bank led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Sufian Taha contributed to this report.
Hamas praised the synagogue attack, while Abbas denounced it as against “all religious principles.” Sufian Taha contributed to this report.
In a sign of possible political rifts, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Yoram Cohen, the chief of the Israeli domestic security agency Shin Bet, as saying Abbas has not been inciting terror attacks.
“This is a battle over Jerusalem,’’ Netanyahu said in a nationally televised address, insisting that Israelis would never give up their claims to the contested city. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which is annexed and occupied by Israel, to be the capital of any future Palestinian state.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another militant organization, asserted responsibility for the synagogue attack. But police said they were still investigating the claim, and relatives of the Palestinian assailants said the cousins were not members of any Palestinian faction.
Among the dead was Mosheh Twersky, dean of an English-speaking religious school in Jerusalem and a member of one of the most respected families in Orthodox Jewish scholarship.
The State Department identified the other slain Americans as Aryeh Kupinsky and Cary William Levine (who was also known as Kalman Levine). Israeli authorities identified the British victim as Avraham Goldberg. All had dual Israeli citizenship.
Mirit Sandori, a Har Nof resident, said she was shocked but not surprised.
“We have no security in this neighborhood, and the situation has been tense in Jerusalem for a long time,” said Sandori, who said she works with Palestinians from East Jerusalem in a supermarket. “Lately, they have been looking at us with cold eyes, eyes of hate.”
Many Palestinians were deeply angered by Israel’s decision last month to suspend access to the Al-Aqsa mosque in an area known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, a holy site to both religions.
The Israeli restrictions — which are now lifted — came after a Palestinian gunman tried to kill an Israeli American activist who wants Jews to be allowed to pray at the site. Jews and Christians are normally allowed to visit the area as tourists. But they are banned from praying, singing or making religious displays.
Sufian Taha in Jerusalem, Brian Murphy in Washington and Daniela Deane in London contributed to this report.