By Ruth Eglash,
JERUSALEM — Israeli security forces and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem engaged in intense clashes Wednesday morning after reports circulated that an Arab youth was kidnapped and murdered, possibly in an attack meant to avenge the recent abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers.
Although Israeli police had yet to confirm the circumstances of 16-year-old Mohammad Abu Khieder’s disappearance, the incident stoked already soaring tensions in the region, raising the specter of wider violence between Palestinians and Israelis.
Street battles broke out between security forces and residents from the boy’s neighborhood in the Arab part of the city, which is annexed by Israel. Palestinian protesters hurled firebombs and stones at Israeli police and soldiers and smashed and set fire to light-rail stops in the neighborhood. Israeli forces responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and smoke grenades, injuring two journalists, one seriously. Two Israeli journalists were attacked by Palestinian protesters.
Israel police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police received reports early Wednesday that a teenager had been pulled into a car in the Shuafat neighborhood of East Jerusalem. Israeli police set up roadblocks, and within an hour and a half they found a badly burned body in a forest on the outskirts of Jerusalem, he said, adding that forensic tests were being conducted to determine the identity.
The attack occurred one day after Israel buried three teenagers who had been kidnapped near a Jewish settlement in the tense, Israeli-occupied West Bank on June 12. Their bodies were discovered Monday in a field near the West Bank city of Hebron, prompting a national outpouring of anger and grief. Police are investigating whether Wednesday’s killing had a “criminal or nationalistic” motive, Rosenfeld said.
But among Palestinians, suspicion centered on extremist Jewish settlers, whom Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused of “killing and burning a little boy.” He demanded, in a statement, that Israel “hold the killers accountable.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged police to “swiftly investigate who was behind the loathsome murder and its motive,” and he called on all sides “not to take the law into their own hands.”
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry issued a statement urging calm and condemning “in the strongest possible terms the despicable and senseless abduction and murder” of the Palestinian teen.
“Those who undertake acts of vengeance only destabilize an already explosive and emotional situation,” Kerry said. “The world has too often learned the hard way that violence only leads to more violence, and, at this tense and dangerous moment, all parties must do everything in their power to protect the innocent and act with reasonableness and restraint, not recrimination and retribution.”
Relatives of the Palestinian youth said he was abducted about 4 a.m. while waiting alone outside his home for the early morning call to prayer. Bushra Abu Khieder, his aunt, said a surveillance camera at her husband’s nearby store recorded the scene, which showed a Hyundai car driving toward her nephew and turning around three times. When it eventually stopped, one of the passengers approached him, asked a question and then grabbed him and pushed him into the car, she said.
Israeli police said they were reviewing the video footage.
Khieder’s mother, Suha Abu Khieder, told reporters that her son had been “robbed from my lap.” Referring to the murdered Israeli teens, she said: “Their sons were important to them, just like my son is important to me.”
Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, disappeared while hitchhiking home from their religious schools in the West Bank. Fraenkel was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen.
As the clashes spiraled on Wednesday, Fraenkel’s uncle, Yishai Fraenkel, condemned the latest killing.
“There is no difference between blood and blood,” he told Israeli reporters. “A murderer is a murderer, no matter his nationality and age. There is no justification, no forgiveness and no atonement for any murder.”
Israel has blamed the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules the crowded Gaza Strip, for the abductions and killings of the three Israelis. Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union, has denied involvement.
On Wednesday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zohri reiterated that the organization had played no part in the killing of the Israelis, and he said the organization held Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders “directly responsible” for the Khieder’s apparent killing and kidnapping and vowed revenge.
“Our people will not let this crime go unpunished, also all the crimes of killing, burning, destroying that are perpetrated by your settlers,” he said. “They will pay the price of all these crimes and you will see it soon.”
The Israeli military said that nine rockets had been fired Wednesday at Israel from the Gaza strip, and that all landed in unpopulated areas. Israel responded in the late afternoon with an airstrike on what the military said were the launching sites of four of the rockets.
In Gaza, Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal said that he had reached out to Qatar, Gulf nations and the Organization of the Islamic Conference in search of support for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza strip in the face of the escalation in tension.
The statement also criticized Abbas — whose Fatah political faction recently reached a tenuous unity government deal with Hamas after a seven year split — calling on him to end the Palestinian Authority’s security coordination with Israel in the West Bank.
Elsewhere in Jerusalem on Wednesday, a few hundred Israeli students protested what some perceive to be inaction by the government in responding to the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli teens. Netanyahu has convened his security cabinet for the past two nights to discuss a response to the killings but has announced no decision yet.
The students gathered at the Western entrance to the city and chanted: “The people demand collective punishment” and “All supporters of murderers are terrorists.” They held up large posters with the faces of the slain Israelis.
On Tuesday evening, as the teens were buried, several hundred right-wing Jewish activists rioted in Jerusalem, shouting “Death to Arabs” and calling for revenge. According to local media reports, they attempted to identify Arabs by speaking to them in Hebrew and listening to their accents. Five Arabs were attacked, and two needed medical treatment, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. Police said Wednesday that 50 of the protesters were arrested.
The sharp escalation in tensions came a day after Israel pounded what it said were Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip with dozens of airstrikes, and tens of thousands of Israelis gathered for the funerals of the Israeli teenagers.
Netanyahu pledged Tuesday night that everyone involved in the crime “will bear the consequences.” He said Israeli forces, which have arrested nearly 400 Palestinians and killed at least five during a more-than-two-week search, would “vigorously strike at Hamas members and infrastructure” in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “If need be, we will expand the campaign,” he warned.
“Hamas is responsible,” the prime minister said at the start of the security cabinet meeting. “Hamas will pay, and Hamas will continue to pay.”
The Israeli military has pressed ahead with its largest and most aggressive security sweep in the West Bank in decades, searching for two suspects it says carried out the abduction and murders. Israeli officials have said the suspects, Marwan Kawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aysha, 33, are Hamas operatives.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military blew up the entrances to and raided the homes of the two men, who have not been seen since the night the teenagers disappeared. Israeli authorities have said both suspects have spent time in Israeli prisons. Overnight, a military spokesman said, soldiers made three additional arrests in the West Bank; Palestinian news media reported that a 16-year-old was killed during the raid.
On Wednesday, Khieder’s mother said Israeli forces should also demolish the homes of those responsible for her son’s death.
Islam Abdul-Kareem in Gaza City, Sufian Taha in Jerusalem and Daniela Deane in London contributed to this report.
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