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West Bank Funerals Become Displays of Palestinian Defiance Palestinian Defiance on Display at West Bank Funerals
(about 9 hours later)
JERUSALEM – The funeral of a Palestinian prisoner who died of cancer in Israeli custody set off displays of angry defiance on Thursday in the West Bank city of Hebron. Masked gunmen loyal to the Palestinian president fired into the air to underscore calls for vengeance, and clashes broke out between Israeli soldiers and youths burning tires and hurling stones. JERUSALEM — Days before Secretary of State John Kerry’s return to the region, anger and defiance continued to flare across the West Bank on Thursday as Palestinians buried two teenagers killed by Israeli soldiers during protests triggered by the death of a prisoner with cancer while in Israeli custody.
Farther north, near the city of Tulkarm, the burial of two other Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces late on Wednesday also became a rallying point for mourners calling for continued resistance against Israeli occupation. Masked militiamen fired into the air at the prisoner’s funeral, in the volatile city of Hebron, where some of the thousands of mourners called for a third intifada, or uprising.
Unrest in the West Bank, which has been simmering for several months, has raised the specter of a wider explosion of violence with some Palestinians in Hebron calling for a new uprising to liberate Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The charged atmosphere did not bode well for diplomacy, with Secretary of State John Kerry expected in the region next week in part to try to find a formula to restart peace negotiations. Clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths hurling stones and firebombs erupted there and in other West Bank locations for the third straight day, as Palestinian leaders accused Israel of escalating tensions in order to thwart Washington’s efforts.
The Palestinian leadership accused Israel of harming the American effort. “It seems that Israel wants to spark chaos in the Palestinian territories,” President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority told leaders of his Fatah faction at a meeting in Ramallah. “Israel on every occasion is using lethal force against peaceful young protesters, and peaceful demonstrations are being suppressed with the power of weapons. This is not acceptable at all.”
“This escalation proves that the Israeli government only looks at reality through brute power, settlement activities and Judaization,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement. Mr. Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said in a statement, “This escalation proves that the Israeli government only looks at reality through brute power, settlement activities, and Judaization.”
Thousands in Hebron attended the funeral of the prisoner, Maysara Abu Hamdiya, 64, who died of cancer that, according to an Israeli autopsy, began in the vocal cords and had spread to the lungs, neck, chest, liver, spine and ribs. The Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of deliberately delaying his diagnosis and treatment. The Israel prison service said a committee would examine the circumstances of his death. Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said such comments, as well as previous ones asserting that Israeli negligence was to blame for the 64-year-old prisoner’s death, threatened the “serious efforts under way” since President Obama’s visit here last month to restart the stalemated peace process.
A retired general in the Palestinian Authority security services, Mr. Hamdiya was buried with military honors. He was detained by Israel in 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, and was serving a life term for attempted murder for his involvement in a failed suicide bombing in a Jerusalem cafe. “We are concerned that there are elements in the P.A. that seem to refuse to jettison the harsh language of confrontation, and try to exploit different incidents to stir up trouble,” Mr. Regev said in an interview. “The only path to Palestinian statehood is through peace and reconciliation with Israel. Extreme confrontational language, incitement to violence, does not serve that end.”
The thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails hold a hallowed place in Palestinian society as heroic fighters for the cause, and Mr. Hamdiya’s death has stirred outrage. Mr. Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, have been among Palestinians accusing Israeli of embracing a policy of medical negligence. The Palestinian Authority’s minister of prisoner affairs, Issa Qaraqe, attended Mr. Hamdiya’s funeral along with many local dignitaries. Mr. Kerry is expected to visit here every few weeks to try to jump-start the peace process and to focus first on building trust and confidence between the sides. But the rising tension in the West Bank — coupled with renewed rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which prompted an Israeli airstrike there Tuesday for the first time in four months — shifts the landscape.
Mr. Hamdiya’s hometown, Hebron, in the southern West Bank, is notoriously volatile, with a few hundred Jewish settlers living amid about 170,000 Palestinians. Some analysts said the renewed violence and the second death of a prisoner in two months, made the prospect of diplomatic progress remote, with the Palestinian street increasingly restive and Mr. Abbas under pressure even from leaders of his own party to pursue claims against Israel in the International Criminal Court, a move Washington has urged him to delay. But others said the worsening situation on the ground could lend a new urgency to Mr. Kerry’s outreach.
His death appeared to have unified the deeply divided Palestinians, at least temporarily. Flags of all the rival political and militant factions were raised in the crowds, including those of Fatah, the mainstream secularist party led by Mr. Abbas, and its rivals, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. “On the one hand it complicates the situation for Kerry, on the other hand it says something about the need to intensify American efforts,” said Ghassan Khatib, vice president of Birzeit University in the West Bank and a former Palestinian Authority spokesman. “If things will be left to local and internal dynamics, things might get out of hand.”
With Palestinians in the city on a general strike, dozens of masked militiamen of Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs’ Brigade, who have mostly lain low in recent years, attended the funeral. Shlomo Brom, director of the program on Israel-Palestinian relations at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said both sides wanted to avoid an intifada, and that the change in Israel’s cabinet and governing coalition could provide Mr. Kerry an opening.
In a speech to the crowd, a spokesman for the group said, “We will not allow the Israelis to kill our people, especially the prisoners.” “As a result of the recent developments,” Mr. Brom said, “I think it is easier for the two leaderships to get off the trees they climbed on.”
He added, “We are calling on President Abbas to give us a green light to react to what happened to Maysara Abu Hamdiya.” Unrest in the West Bank, which has been simmering for months, picked up after the death Tuesday morning of Maysara Abu Hamdiya, a retired general in the Palestinian security services who had been serving a life sentence for his involvement in a failed 2002 suicide bombing in a Jerusalem cafe. Autopsies by both Israeli and Palestinian officials confirmed that Mr. Hamdiya died of cancer, which began in the vocal cords and spread to the lungs, neck, chest, liver, spine and ribs. The Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of deliberately delaying his diagnosis and treatment.
The Israeli military reported groups of stone-throwing Palestinians on the main road leading to Hebron and at another location in the northern West Bank. The thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails hold a hallowed place in Palestinian society, and Mr. Hamdiya was buried with military honors. His death seemed to at least temporarily unite the deeply divided Palestinians, at a huge funeral dotted with flags of Fatah and its rivals, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and attended by dozens of masked members of Fatah’s military wing, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which has mostly lain low in recent years.
Mr. Hamdiya’s death was also the apparent cause of a flare-up of violence across the Israel-Gaza border this week. A small Islamic extremist group fired rockets into southern Israel, saying it was acting in support of the Palestinian prisoners, and Israel retaliated late Tuesday night with an airstrike in Gaza, its first since a cease-fire that ended eight days of cross-border fighting in November. That front appeared to have largely quieted by Thursday. “We will not allow the Israelis to kill our people, especially the prisoners,” a spokesman for the Brigades told the crowd. “We are calling on President Abbas to give us a green light to react to what happened to Maysara Abu Hamdiya.”
But the potential for confrontation in the West Bank could be seen late Wednesday when youths protesting the death of the prisoner clashed with soldiers at an Israeli army post near the West Bank city of Tulkarm. The Israeli military said that the youths were hurling firebombs at the soldiers, who responded with live fire. Amer Nassar, 17, was killed on the spot. The body of Naji Balbisi, 18, was found in the early hours of the morning. A similar scene unfolded farther north near Tulkarm, where the bodies of the two teenagers fatally shot overnight — but not their bloodied faces — were covered with Palestinian flags, and mourners called for “revenge.”
Thabet Amal, the mayor of Anabta, the village near Tulkarm where the youths lived, told the official Voice of Palestine radio that both had been shot in the chest. The Israeli military said it was investigating the episode. The Israeli military said that the youths were hurling firebombs at an army post late Wednesday, and that soldiers responded with live fire; it is investigating the episode.

Nayef Hashlamoun contributed reporting from Hebron, West Bank.

Amer Nassar, 17, was killed on the spot. The body of Naji Balbisi, 18, was found in the early hours of Thursday.
Mayor Salah al-Najeeb of Anabta, the village near Tulkarm where both young men lived, said “the soldiers opened fire to kill.” Tayyeb Abdul Rahim, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, said: “These sacrifices will only make us committed to our just national rights. We will not retreat, surrender nor give up any drop of our soil.”
Palestinian officials said 21 people were injured by rubber bullets and dozens more affected by tear gas in the clashes in Hebron, which continued into the evening.
Sabri Saidam, a leader of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, which met Thursday in Ramallah with Mr. Abbas, said many of the party leaders expressed frustration that the Palestinians’ upgraded status in the United Nations had not been used to gain access to the International Criminal Court and similar agencies.
“Obviously tension is running high and people are saying we should not give up the pressure that needs to be exerted on Israel,” Mr. Saidam said of the growing protests in the West Bank. “But the main talk is focusing on diplomatic channels and international channels through our membership in the U.N.”
Aaron David Miller, a longtime peace negotiator who is now vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said this week’s deterioration did not bode well for Mr. Kerry’s visit.
“We are way, way beyond the point where this process will be able to survive the terror and the violence and the intimidating tactics that both sides use in an attempt to influence the negotiations,” Mr. Miller said. “If this is truly going to work, then the out-of-the-negotiating-room environment, what Israelis and Palestinians are doing to each other on a daily basis, has to reach a point of general tranquillity.”

Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank, and Nayef Hashlamoun from Hebron, West Bank.