Palestinians rage at Israelis after teen slain, body burned

Palestinian men argue with Israeli border police Wednesday in east Jerusalem after protesters took to the streets in anger over the abduction and slaying of 17-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir.
Palestinian men argue with Israeli border police Wednesday in east Jerusalem after protesters took to the streets in anger over the abduction and slaying of 17-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir.

JERUSALEM -- Palestinians accused Israeli extremists of abducting and killing an Arab teenager and burning his body Wednesday, prompting hours of clashes in east Jerusalem and drawing accusations that the youth was murdered to avenge the killings of three kidnapped Israeli teens.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged a swift inquiry into the "reprehensible murder" and called on people to respect the rule of law. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said it was clear that extremist Jewish settlers were responsible and called on Israel to bring the killers to justice.

"The settlers have killed and burned a little boy. They are well-known," Abbas said, accusing Israel of tolerating settler violence toward Palestinians. "I demand that the Israeli government hold the killers accountable."

The death added to the already heightened tensions caused by the killings of the three Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were discovered Monday, just more than two weeks after they disappeared in the West Bank.

Israel accused Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, of being behind the abductions, which led to the largest ground operation in the West Bank in nearly a decade, with Israel arresting hundreds of Hamas operatives as part of a broad manhunt.

The discovery of the bodies led to a national outpouring of grief, with tens of thousands of people attending a funeral Tuesday in which the teens were laid to rest side by side. As the burial took place, hundreds of young Israelis marched through downtown Jerusalem screaming for revenge.

photo

AP

A Palestinian readies a Molotov cocktail Wednesday during clashes with Israeli police in east Jerusalem over the abduction and killing of a Palestinian teenager.

Hours later, relatives of Mohammed Abu Khdeir said the 17-year-old was forced into a car and whisked away from a neighborhood of east Jerusalem. A burned body believed to be his was found shortly afterward in a Jerusalem forest, though police said late Wednesday that they were still awaiting forensics tests to make a positive identification.

The Israeli minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovich, urged residents to "lower the volume" regarding the suspicion of a revenge attack.

"There are attempts to make a connection between the two incidents, and we are still checking all directions," he said on Israel Radio. "There are many possibilities, criminal and nationalistic, and everything is being examined in a responsible manner."

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld also said authorities were looking at "a number of different directions" in the killing.

But Abu Khdeir's family said they had no doubt about the killers, accusing extremist Israelis of killing him to avenge the deaths of the Israeli teenagers.

"Who else could do this? There's no one else," said the teen's father, Saed Abu Khdeir. He said he spent the day with police and gave DNA samples to help identify the body.

Police said the testing was still ongoing Wednesday evening. Police also were reviewing security camera footage taken from the scene. Relatives said the video showed a car nearing the youth, then people stepping out and forcing him into the vehicle and speeding away.

The family of one of the Israeli teens condemned the death of the Palestinian youth.

"There is no difference between blood and blood. Murder is murder," said Yishai Fraenkel, an uncle of one of the teens. "Whatever the nationality or age, there is no justification, no forgiveness or penance for any murder."

As news of the Palestinian teen's disappearance spread, hundreds of Palestinians in east Jerusalem took to the streets, torching light-rail train stations and hurling stones at Israeli police, who responded with stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, home to virtually all of the city's Palestinian population, in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed the area. The Palestinians seek the area as the capital of a future state, and tensions in the volatile eastern sector often boil over into violence.

The clashes continued throughout the day, emptying streets in east Jerusalem's normally bustling Beit Hanina neighborhood. Masked Palestinians hiding in alleyways and in a neighborhood mosque hurled rocks toward Israeli forces, who occasionally responded with stun grenades. Two people were taken to a hospital with light injuries, police said, and the clashes left a main road littered with stones, debris and burning tires.

Netanyahu called on all sides not to take the law into their own hands, saying, "Israel is a state of law and everybody is obligated to act according to the law."

Netanyahu spoke before noon with Aharonovich, the internal security minister, and requested that "investigators act as quickly as possible to find out who stands behind the despicable murder," according to a statement from the prime minister's office.

The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, also called for calm and condemned the killing of the teenager in a statement.

"This is a horrible and barbaric act which I strongly condemn," he said. "This is not our way and I am fully confident that our security forces will bring the perpetrators to justice. I call on everyone to exercise restraint."

In Washington, President Barack Obama's administration denounced the killing as a "heinous murder" and called for justice.

"There are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people," said Secretary of State John Kerry, calling the killing "sickening."

In a statement, the European Union condemned the killing "in the strongest terms" and welcomed Israel's pledge to investigate. It urged all parties to show "maximum restraint."

Despite the calls for calm, fighting continued along Israel's southern border with Gaza.

Late Wednesday, Gaza militants fired a barrage of eight rockets toward southern Israel, for a total of 20 rockets and mortar rounds fired on Israel throughout the day, the army said. It said anti-rocket defenses intercepted two rockets. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

The army said it carried out one airstrike on a mortar-launching site in Gaza, scoring a "direct hit."

Early today, a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into a house in the southern Israeli border town of Sderot, causing heavy damage to the structure and a nearby road and knocking out electricity throughout town, the army said. The family was huddled inside a shelter, and no one was hurt, the army said.

Even before the abduction of the Israeli teenagers, a spate of hate crimes had revived concerns about the so-called Price Tag movement in which Israeli extremists have for years carried out attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank and against the Israeli authorities' efforts to curtail illegal settlement activity.

The U.S. State Department's annual report on terrorism published this spring included Price Tag for the first time, citing a U.N. count of 400 attacks in 2013 and saying they went "largely unprosecuted."

Last year, a special unit was set up in the Israel Police's West Bank division to contend with the problem, and this spring Israel's top justice officials considered classifying the Price Tag movement as a terrorist organization to give the authorities additional tools to crack down.

Amir Peretz, the Israeli environment minister, said attacks like Wednesday's "ignite the conflict" with the Palestinians "and portray Israel in an inappropriate way."

"We must uproot and denounce such phenomenon and we must deal with them strongly and unequivocally," said Peretz, a former Labor Party leader who is now part of the centrist Hatnua faction.

"This is now a battle over the character of the state of Israel," he added. "A murderer is a murderer is a murderer, and he must be dealt with just like any other murderer is treated."

Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman, Yousur Alhlou, Mohammed Daraghmeh, and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press and by Isabel Kershner, Jodi Rudoren and Said Ghazali of The New York Times.

A Section on 07/03/2014

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