Opening His Mother’s Clothing Shop, and Then Heading to Tel Aviv for a Rampage
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Version 0 of 1. AL JIB, West Bank — After the raid by Israeli security forces, details of the young Palestinian man’s life had been strewn haphazardly on the floor of one room of his family’s home: a mattress, a tangle of blankets and clothes, an ashtray of cigarette butts, an energy drink can and handwritten notes about electrical circuits — the young man had just received a diploma in electrical studies — and, chillingly in hindsight, a new-looking knife with a long, smooth blade. The ordinary life that had been lived in the home at the edge of this village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank had suddenly taken on international notoriety: The man, Hamza Matrouk, 23, had stabbed about a dozen people in a rampage that began on a bus in Tel Aviv. Many residents of this farming village between Jerusalem and Ramallah said that they barely knew the young man, Mr. Matrouk; that he was quiet and introspective and had no close friends here. But by Thursday, a day after the attack, under arrest and being treated in a Tel Aviv hospital, everybody knew his name and what he had done. Mr. Matrouk was shot in the leg by an Israeli corrections officer as he fled the bus and ran through nearby streets, stabbing a woman in the back along the way. For young people and others in the village, who said they were angered by the war in Gaza over the summer and by recent tensions over the revered Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, he had become an instant hero. “We are proud of him,” said Rima Khattab, 48, a neighbor who runs a minimarket next door to the Matrouk apartment, and whose family owns the building. “Every Palestinian should be proud of him.” Mr. Matrouk appeared to fit the category of the new kind of threat menacing Israel: attacks carried out with seeming spontaneity by individuals acting without the instruction or backing of an organization. A series of deadly terrorist attacks against Israelis in October and November in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the West Bank were the work of Palestinians armed with knives, cleavers or guns or who used vehicles as weapons. Nobody here could point to anything remarkable about Mr. Matrouk. A former schoolmate said he was a good student but did not excel. Said to be pious, he prayed regularly at mosques but he was not considered an extremist. He was not known to be affiliated with any Palestinian political or militant faction. He took whatever electrical work he could find. When there was none, he helped out his mother, who was divorced from his father 14 years ago, in her Islamic clothing store in Ramallah. Like many in the West Bank, the family was in debt and struggling. On Tuesday morning, Mr. Matrouk bought chocolate at Mrs. Khattab’s grocery, then went to Ramallah to open his mother’s store. He stayed for a couple of hours, then told his mother he was going to visit his father in the Tulkarm refugee camp, in the northern West Bank. He was planning to ask him for 300 shekels, about $76, to help pay off a 550 shekel debt for his electrical studies. His mother, Howla Kaabeh, said there was nothing unusual in the way he said goodbye. Then on Wednesday, she heard his name on the news. The police said that during his initial interrogation, Mr. Matrouk said that he had been motivated by the fighting in Gaza, the tensions over Al Aqsa and radical Islamic content on the Internet that spoke of “reaching paradise” — a goal he apparently believed he could achieve by attacking Israelis. Officials of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza, praised Mr. Matrouk’s act without claiming responsibility. The Western-backed Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s on-again-off-again negotiating partner, had not condemned the attack. Mr. Matrouk’s story is one of dislocation in a conservative society in which many people remain rooted among extended families and clans. After the divorce, Ms. Kaabeh and her four children moved to the Amari refugee camp, which abuts Ramallah, and lived there for six years. They then moved to Al Jib because the rent was the same but the housing was better, Ms. Kaabeh said. The family apartment is sparsely furnished and other than some Islamic decorations in the living room, the walls are bare. The case of a computer had been broken open, presumably by the Israeli security forces. A small yard with a withered vine looks over orchards and fields and, beyond, the high-rises of a nearby Jewish settlement. Another recent assailant, Muataz Hijazi, who had been jailed for security offenses and who shot and wounded Yehuda Glick, an Israeli activist who has pushed for Jewish prayer rights in the compound housing the Aqsa mosque, revered by Jews as Temple Mount, also experienced a form of dislocation. His family moved back to East Jerusalem from the United Arab Emirates when Mr. Hijazi was a teenager. Yet others, like Nur al-Din Abu Hashieh, 18, who fatally stabbed an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv in November and is in custody in Israel, had lived in the same houses since birth. Mr. Abu Hashieh’s shocked relatives, in the Askar refugee camp on the edge of Nablus, insisted that his only ambition had been to earn enough money to buy an apartment and marry. A painter and decorator, he had bedroom walls that were painted a bold electric blue. Standing among rails of mostly drab-colored long coats and robes in her Islamic clothing store a day after the bus stabbings, Ms. Kaabeh, Mr. Matrouk’s mother, was careful not to condone her son’s act for fear of reprisal by the authorities, but she justified it. “All the Palestinian people are following what’s happening in Al Aqsa and Gaza,” she said, “and he is one of the Palestinian people.” She said her son had written on Facebook recently that he was not ready to marry and wanted to work and earn money. Before he left the store Tuesday, she said, he seemed “happy, normal.” “From a young age, we have always said we should do good things in order to go to paradise,” she continued. “In his opinion, this was a good thing.” |