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Arab Boy's Death Escalates Clash Over Abductions - New York Times

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Middle East |Arab Boy’s Death Escalates Clash Over Abductions



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Suha Abu Khdeir, center, whose son Muhammad was found dead, with relatives on Wednesday. “We don’t feel safe,” she said. Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times









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 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.



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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.




Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli border police broke out in Jerusalem on Wednesday after the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian teenager. Mahmoud Illean/Associated Press

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 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.”


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.”



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.


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.”




Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir was killed a day after the burial of three Israelis. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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.



“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.


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.


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.


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.




Play Video|2:04

Reactions to Death of Palestinian Youth



Reactions to Death of Palestinian Youth



Palestinian and Israeli officials and a relative of the slain teenager, whose body was found in a Jerusalem forest early Wednesday, discussed the kidnapping and killing.


By Quynhanh Do on July 2, 2014. Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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.


“I don’t expect any results,” he said of the investigation.


Muhammad, who was studying at a vocational school to be an electrician, was the fifth of seven children, three sons and four daughters.


“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.”


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.




Palestinian protesters threw stones at Israeli police during clashes on Wednesday in Shuafat, a neighborhood in Jerusalem. Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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.


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.


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.



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.


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.


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.


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!”


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.


“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.”



Jodi Rudoren and Said Ghazali contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Robert Mackey from New York.




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