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Suha Abu Khdeir, 44, center, mourns Muhammad, 16, her son. Credit Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
JERUSALEM — As police tear gas wafted through his East Jerusalem neighborhood, the father of a slain 16-year-old Arab, the possible victim of a Jewish revenge attack, mourned with friends who had come to console him Wednesday in the enclosed porch of his two-story home. He had just spent seven hours with police investigators.
“I don’t expect any results,” the father, Hussein Abu Khdeir, 48, said of the investigation into the abduction and killing of his son Muhammad early that morning.
He said he had not been allowed to see his son’s body, apparently because it had been burned. Investigators identified it by matching DNA samples taken from the saliva of both parents.
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The killing came a day after three Israeli teenagers, abducted and killed in the occupied West Bank last month, apparently by Palestinian militants, were buried in Israel, with mournful ceremonies punctuated by collective grief. Israeli calls for a tough response raised fears that the vendetta cycle between Israelis and Palestinians would only escalate.
Photo
A family photograph of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Word of Muhammad’s death, coming just as the monthlong Ramadan holiday started, set off rioting in the family’s neighborhood of Shuafat, with Palestinian youths hurling rocks at the riot police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. It was a marked contrast to the quiet mourning underway in the family’s house, just yards away. Members of the family used a hose to spray away the tear gas outside.
In an interview on his porch, Mr. Abu Khdeir, who owns an electrical appliance store, said he had been wakened in the early hours by local youths who came to tell him that his son had been abducted outside the neighborhood mosque. He then called the police, who asked for the son’s cellphone number. It rang, unanswered. Hours later a body was found in a Jerusalem forest.
Mr. Abu Khdeir, who has three sons and four daughters — Muhammad was the middle son — said he expected that the body would be returned to the family on Thursday and that an autopsy would be conducted, with a Palestinian doctor present.
Israeli officials have denounced Muhammad’s death as a despicable act but have urged caution in rushing to judgment on who was responsible.
Mr. Abu Khdeir showed visitors photographs, on his cellphone, that he said were from street security cameras near the mosque. One showed two young men walking on the pavement, whom he said were the kidnappers.
“I am against kidnapping and killing,” he said. “Whether Jew or Arab, who would accept that his son or daughter would be kidnapped and killed? I call on both sides to stop the bloodshed.”
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