As the families, and the nation, mourn the three Israeli teenagers who were abducted three weeks ago and murdered, violent disturbances broke out in Jerusalem today, following the finding of the body of an Arab youth in the vicinity of the capital.
In the early ours of this morning, the police received a report of a person who had been forced into a vehicle in the Beit Hanina area in East Jerusalem. Steps were taken immediately to trace the vehicle, forces were mobilized and checkpoints set up. At about the same time, a youth was reported missing after he left a mosque in the Arab neighborhood of Shuafat, and a search was mounted for him. After about an hour, a charred body was found in the Jerusalem Forest, the identity of which is as yet unconfirmed. An investigation was launched, with the participation of the Israel Security Agency.
Riots and confrontation with police broke out in the area where the missing boy lived, in Shuafat and Beit Hanina. Thousands of East Jerusalem residents crowded round the missing boy's home in Shuafat and on the main road in the neighborhood. Some threw stones and pipe bombs at security forces. Three pipe bombs were hurled at police in Beit Hanina. One exploded, injuring a resident of the neighborhood. None of the policemen was hurt.
Abu Mazen: Israel must condemn
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) placed responsibility for the murder on Israel. He demanded that Israel should expose the murderers and try them. He also demanded that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu should condemn the boy's abduction and murder, just as the Palestinian Authority had condemned the abduction of the three Israeli youths, Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel, and Eyal Yifrach. Shortly afterwards, Netanyahu spoke to Minister of Internal Security Yitzhak Aharonovitch and requested that investigators should act as quickly as possible to find those behind "this despicable murder" and the background to it. Netanyahu also called on all sides not to take the law into their hands. "Israel is a country of the rule of law, and all are required to act in accordance with the law," he said.
Despite the various conjectures about the background to the finding of the body, the police stress that all possible avenues are being investigated.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 2, 2014
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