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Suspects Arrested in Death of Palestinian Youth, Israeli Police Say 6 Israelis Held Over the Killing of Palestinian
(about 5 hours later)
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. JERUSALEM — Confronting the possibility of spiraling retaliatory violence between Jews and Palestinians, the Israeli authorities arrested six Israelis on Sunday in the killing of a Palestinian teenager, found beaten and burned in a Jerusalem forest last week.
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.” After days of near silence about the case, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned what he called a horrific crime and pledged that anyone found guilty would “face the full weight of the law.” Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defense minister, said in a statement that he was “ashamed and shocked by the cruel murder,” describing those behind it as “Jewish terrorists.”
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. An Israeli police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said there was a “strong possibility” that the motive for the killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, 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. Muhammad’s body was discovered on Wednesday, about an hour after he was forced into a car in East Jerusalem, a few yards from his home.
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. A judicial gag order prevented officials from revealing details about the suspects, but a person familiar with the case said several of them were minors.
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. “We do not differentiate between terrorists, and we will respond to all of them,” he said. The arrests and tough language came after weeks of calls for harsher Israeli military action in the Palestinian territories after the abduction of the teenagers: Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16. After their bodies were found last week, Mr. Netanyahu called their killers “beasts.”
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. An Israeli military crackdown in the West Bank after the three disappeared shook the Palestinian Authority and its reconciliation pact with Hamas in Gaza, weakening the more moderate West Bank leadership in the eyes of its public as it seeks international support for statehood.
“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.” Muhammad’s killing led to a wave of outrage, with Palestinian youths clashing with Israeli security forces in parts of East Jerusalem and Galilee in scenes reminiscent of the Palestinian uprisings in 1987 and 2000.
A person familiar with the case said 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.” The killings on each side — and the subsequent arrest of the Palestinian’s American cousin, whose beating by the Israeli police was caught on video — have raised the specter of the broader conflict’s descending into a cycle of personal vendettas and bloodletting.
Lawyers representing the suspects said they had not been allowed to meet with them. “It gives legitimacy to our enemies to do what they want to us,” said Shaul Marziano, 65, a retired Israeli factory worker. “They should be treated just like Arab terrorists,” he said of the Israelis suspected of killing Muhammad.
Mr. Rosenfeld said the suspects were being questioned to determine whether they were also linked to an attempted kidnapping of a Palestinian child, Mousa Zaloum, 8, from the same area of East Jerusalem a day before Muhammad was abducted. Mr. Rosenfeld said the child’s mother had made an official complaint to the police that was being investigated separately. Now, Israelis are left to face the prospect that the entrenched conflict with the Palestinians is intensifying radicalization within both populations.
Mousa was later photographed with red marks on his neck. Local residents told the news media that he had been slashed with a knife or choked, and they identified the would-be kidnappers as Israelis. Mousa’s mother struggled with the kidnappers, and her son escaped. Some Israelis compared the moment on Sunday to that of watershed events like the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a right-wing Israeli fanatic, or the massacre by Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli doctor, of 29 Palestinian Muslims at prayer in 1994 in Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s body was discovered on Wednesday, about an hour after he was forced into a car in the Shuafat neighborhood of East Jerusalem, a few yards from his home. Security cameras captured images of two men whom residents identified as the kidnappers. The residents said a third man had been driving the car. “This is a wake-up call,” said Prof. Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, accusing the government and the security services of not having dealt seriously enough with the growing phenomenon in recent years of an extreme, nationalist fringe that has desecrated mosques and destroyed Palestinian property. Now, with the killing of Muhammad, Professor Avineri said, “a line has been crossed.”
On Saturday, the Palestinian attorney general said an autopsy had found soot in Muhammad’s lungs, suggesting that he was beaten and burned while he was still alive. “This is absolute evil,” he added.
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 police should treat the killing as “a terror act.” In addition to the rioting, tensions spiked along the border with Gaza in the south, with Palestinian militants firing at least 25 rockets in Israel on Sunday and Israel carrying out airstrikes.
Muhammad’s relatives, who were convinced from the outset that the killers were Israelis, felt no immediate comfort or satisfaction. Hamas, the Islamic group that dominates Gaza, said Monday that six of its militants had been killed in a dawn airstrike on a tunnel it used for fighting against Israel, probably the heaviest death toll suffered by the group since a cease-fire came into effect in late 2012. In addition, two militants thought to belong to a more radical Islamic group were killed in an airstrike. Israel said they had been involved in firing rockets.
“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.” For Mr. Netanyahu, Sunday’s arrests were clearly a pivotal moment. He has been under intense pressure from right-wingers in his government to take tougher action against the Palestinians since the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers were found last week, and in the wake of increasing rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel.
The prime minister of the recently formed Palestinian unity government, Rami Hamdallah, and two senior Palestinian security officials visited the family to offer condolences. 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. But Mr. Netanyahu is already out of step with world opinion, being held partly responsible by the Obama administration for scuttling American-brokered Middle East peace talks with repeated announcements of new settlement construction.
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. After paying a condolence call to the family of one of the Israeli teenagers, Mr. Netanyahu stood before television cameras and sent his condolences to the Abu Khdeir family. “We do not differentiate between terrorists, and we will respond to all of them,” he said.
The killings of the three Israelis and then Muhammad have raised the specter of the broader, Israel-Palestinian conflict’s descending into a spiral of personal vendettas 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. But after weeks of taking the Palestinian leadership to task for having entered into a pact with Hamas, the Islamic group that Israel accuses of killing the three Israelis, Mr. Netanyahu also appeared unbowed.
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. “The murderers came from the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority; they returned to territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority,” he said. “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.”
As youths clashed with security forces in Shuafat on Thursday, Tariq Abu Khdeir, 15, a cousin of Muhammad’s 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 footage was spread worldwide on Saturday, fanning local and international outrage. Mr. Rosenfeld said the police and security services were trying to determine whether the suspects had also tried to kidnap a Palestinian child, Mousa Zaloum, 8, from the same area of East Jerusalem a day before Muhammad was abducted. Mousa was later photographed with red marks on his neck, and in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 News the boy said the would-be kidnappers had choked him with a rope. Mousa’s mother struggled with the kidnappers, who she said were speaking Hebrew, and her son escaped.
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. Muhammad’s relatives, who were convinced from the outset that the killers were Israelis, felt no immediate comfort or satisfaction over the arrests.
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. “I feel pain,” his father, Hussein Abu Khdeir, said, surrounded by mourners outside the family home in the Shuafat neighborhood of East Jerusalem. “There is no justice in Israel.”
After blaming Hamas, which dominates Gaza, for the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teenagers, Israel has carried out a broad military crackdown onthe group’s infrastructure in the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership demanded an international commission of inquiry into the killing.
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, which is dominated by Hamas. During the clashes in Shuafat, Muhammad’s cousin Tariq Abu Khdeir, 15, a high school sophomore visiting from Tampa, Fla., was caught on an amateur video being severely beaten by Israeli border police officers. The footage was spread worldwide on Saturday, fanning local and international outrage.
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. On Sunday, Tariq, who is suspected of involvement in violence against police officers, appeared in court, his face and lips swollen from the blows. He was released on bail but will be under house arrest at his uncle’s home, not far from where Muhammad lived. The State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, called for “a speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for the apparent excessive use of force.”
The tit-for-tat clashes continued on Sunday, even as efforts were underway to restore an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that took 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. Tariq said he lost consciousness during the beating and was taken to a hospital. He said he had only been watching the clashes. Seeing the video of himself being beaten for the first time on Sunday afternoon, he said he was shocked. “I don’t believe what happened to me,” he said.
He added that he had been with Muhammad five minutes before he was kidnapped.