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Suspects Arrested in Death of Palestinian Youth, Israeli Police Say - New York Times

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Middle East |Suspects Arrested in Death of Palestinian Youth, Israeli Police Say



http://nyti.ms/1qKPewJ


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JERUSALEM — The Israeli police have arrested a group of Israeli suspects in connection with the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian youth from East Jerusalem who was found beaten and burned in a Jerusalem forest last week, a spokesman for the Israeli Police said Sunday.


After days of near silence about the case, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned what he called a “horrific crime” and pledged that the perpetrators would “face the full weight of the law.”


The police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said there was a “strong possibility” that the motive for the killing was “nationalistic,” indicating that it was a revenge attack by right-wing Jewish extremists for the recent kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.



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Several East Jerusalem neighborhoods have erupted in outrage over the killing of the Palestinian teenager, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, with youths clashing with Israeli security forces for several days. The unrest spread over the weekend to some Arab towns in northern Israel, and tensions remained high along the border with Gaza in the south. Israel braced for more violence with the announcement of the arrests.




Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned what he called a “horrific crime” and pledged that the perpetrators would “face the full weight of the law.” Pool photo by Gali Tibbon

After paying a condolence call to the family of one of the Israeli teenagers in the community of Nof Ayalon, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu stood before the television cameras outside the house and sent his condolences to the Abu Khdeir family, saying, “We do not differentiate between terrorists, and we will respond to all of them.”


But after weeks of taking the Palestinian leadership to task for having entered into a pact with Hamas, the Islamic group that Israel blames for the abduction and killing of the three Israeli teenagers, Mr. Netanyahu appeared unbowed.


“The murderers came from the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority; they returned to territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority,” he said of the kidnappers of the Israeli teenagers. “Therefore, the Palestinian Authority is obliged to do everything in its power to find them, just as we did, just as our security forces located the suspects in the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir within a matter of days.”



A person familiar with the case said that six suspects had been arrested, several of them minors. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a judicial order restricting public comments. Israel’s minister of public security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, described the suspects in a statement as “youths.”


Lawyers representing the suspects said they had not been allowed to meet with them.


Muhammad’s body was discovered on Wednesday, about an hour after he was snatched and forced into a car in the Shuafat neighborhood of East Jerusalem, a few yards from his home. Security cameras captured images of two men who local residents identified as the kidnappers. They said a third man was driving the car.




Tariq Khdeir, a cousin of the dead youth, was beaten by Israeli border police officers. He was greeted by his mother after being released from jail on Sunday. Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

On Saturday, the Palestinian attorney general said that an autopsy had found soot in Muhammad’s lungs, suggesting that he was beaten and burned while he was still alive.



The announcement of the arrests after days of uncertainty about the circumstances of the killing rocked Israel. Yaakov Peri, an Israeli minister and a former chief of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, told reporters that if the perpetrators proved to be Israeli Jews, the killing should be treated by the police as “a terror act.”


Muhammad’s relatives, who were convinced from the outset that the killers were Israelis, felt no immediate comfort or satisfaction.


“I feel pain,” Muhammad’s father, Hussein Abu Khdeir, said as he sat in a tent surrounded by mourners outside the family home in Shuafat. “There is no justice in Israel.”


The prime minister of the recently formed Palestinian unity government, Rami Hamdallah, visited the family to offer condolences, along with two senior Palestinian security officials. Mr. Hamdallah said the Palestinian leadership would demand an international commission of inquiry into the killing, which he described as an “ugly” and “shameful” crime.


The long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict entered this latest phase of brutality and tumult with the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, who also held United States citizenship, on June 12 as they hitched a ride in the West Bank on the way home for the weekend from the yeshivas where they studied. Their bodies were found in a shallow grave in a field near Hebron 18 days later. Israeli officials said it appeared that they had been fatally shot soon after getting into the car.




A Palestinian youth walked through the rubble of his destroyed home after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday. Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency

The killing of the three Israeli teenagers and the subsequent killing of Muhammad have raised the specter of the broader, Israel-Palestinian conflict descending into a spiral of personal vendetta and bloodletting. After the Israeli teenagers’ bodies were found, Israeli right-wing extremists took to the streets, and many, frustrated with what they saw as government inaction, called on social media sites for revenge.


Several Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem and some Arab towns in northern Israel erupted into violence with scenes reminiscent of the outbreak of the Palestinian uprisings in 1987 and 2000.


As youths clashed with security forces in Shuafat on Thursday, Tariq Abu Khdeir, 15, a cousin of Muhammad and a high school sophomore visiting from Tampa, Fla., for summer vacation, was caught on an amateur video being savagely beaten by Israeli border police officers. The video footage was spread worldwide on Saturday, fanning local and international outrage.


The Israeli Justice Ministry opened an investigation into the accusations of police brutality. On Sunday, Tariq, who is suspected of throwing stones at police officers, appeared in court, his face and lips still swollen from the blows. He was released on bail but will be under house arrest in Shuafat.


Watching the video of himself being beaten and kicked for the first time on Sunday afternoon, he said he was shocked. “I don’t believe what happened to me,” he said. He lost consciousness during the beating and was taken to a hospital. Tariq said he had been only watching the clashes and denied that he had been involved in stone-throwing.



Israel has blamed Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza, for the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teenagers and carried out a broad military crackdown on the group’s infrastructure in the West Bank.


At the same time, tensions flared along Israel’s border with Gaza, with Palestinian militants increasing rocket fire into Israel and the Israeli military carrying out airstrikes against militant targets in the Palestinian coastal enclave.


Israeli troops remained massed along the border with Gaza, threatening a large-scale military operation to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets against southern Israeli towns.


The tit-for-tat clashes continued on Sunday, even as efforts were underway to restore an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that came into effect after eight days of fierce cross-border fighting in November 2012. Militants fired 15 rockets and mortar shells at southern Israel, according to the Israeli military, hours after Israel carried out 10 airstrikes against targets associated with militant groups in Gaza. No casualties were reported on either side.



Said Ghazali contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Fares Akram from Gaza.




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