Siege Mentality

While Israel pounds Gaza with bombs, the real battleground of East
Jerusalem is ready to boil over.

BY GREGG CARLSTROM- JULY 8, 2014

JERUSALEM As the sun sets on Shuafat and residents

prepare to break the Ramadan fast, the Palestinian neighborhood goes dark
and quiet. A once-busy main road is almost empty, littered with rocks and
glass; streetlights and traffic signals are broken; and local men anxiously
watch a contingent of black-clad border policemen.
The only real signs of life in Shuafat are inside the mourning tent at the Abu
Khdeir family home. Their son Mohammed, 16, was abducted early on the
morning of July 2 just steps from the house, while he waited for his father to

finish praying at the local mosque. His charred body was discovered in a
forest hours later; an autopsy found that he was burned alive. A poster of
his youthful face hangs from the home, proclaiming him the "martyr of the
dawn."

Police have arrested six people and suggested it was a racially motivated
murder in response to the killing of three Jewish Israelis, who were
kidnapped on June 12 while hitchhiking home from their religious seminary
in the occupied West Bank. Their bodies were found in a valley near Hebron
last month. Israel has blamed Hamas for the killings.
The bloodshed has helped spark another round of fighting that already
threatens to descend into war. Over 200 rockets from the Hamas-controlled
Gaza Strip have targeted Israel, according to the Israeli military -- including
attempted attacks on the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Israeli
military has launched what it has termed "Operation Protective Edge" in an
attempt to end the rocket fire, targeting at least 100 sites throughout Gaza
with airstrikes and authorizing the army to mobilize 40,000 reservists. The
Israeli government has alsobegun preparations for a possible ground
invasion, though the idea still has limited support. At least 25 people have
been killed so far in the Israeli bombardment, including several children,
according to Palestinian officials.
The wave of incitement and violence in Israel, meanwhile, has created a
siege mentality among the 250,000 Palestinians of East Jerusalem. Abu
Khdeir's murder was by far the most brutal example, but there have been
dozens of attacks during the past week -- including an assault on workers in
West Jerusalem hours after the bodies of the three Israelis were found, as
hundreds of right-wing Jews held a demonstration in the city in which they

chanted "death to the Arabs." The streets of Shuafat, Beit Hanina, and other
East Jerusalem neighborhoods were eerily quiet on Monday night, with few
residents coming out to shop and socialize afteriftar, the meal that breaks
the Ramadan fast.
"People were shocked" by Khdeir's murder, said Jamal Zahalka, a
Palestinian member of the Knesset, Israel's parliament. "It shook people
very deeply, the idea of a boy, only 16 years old, burned alive."

Groups of local Arab men -- mostly unarmed, but a few carrying knives and
sticks -- have formed impromptu neighborhood-watch groups in these
neighborhoods. They were on the lookout for "settlers," they said, a word
that has come to be shorthand for the ultranationalist Jews accused of Abu
Khdeir's murder.

"Everybody is tense, everybody is on edge. This is not Ramadan," said

Mustafa, a resident of Shuafat who was among those gathered on the
streets and, like many, asked not to be identified by his last name. "Nobody
trusts the Israelis. Nothing has happened in this neighborhood, yet, but
nobody trusts that will continue."

There have already been other attempted kidnappings. Police said that the
men accused of killing Abu Khdeir tried to abduct another child, just 9 years
old, in the same neighborhood one day earlier. And there are daily reports
of Palestinians being verbally and physically assaulted on the street, at
work, on public transportation -- anywhere they cross paths with Jewish
Israelis.

The violence has exacerbated the differences between East Jerusalem,

which is predominantly Arab Palestinian, and the western parts of the city,
which are largely Jewish. "There is no security here," Abu Khdeir's mother,
Suha, said in an interview. "We don't have safety in this neighborhood like
they do in the Jewish areas."

Many residents of East Jerusalem cross the city each day to work in the
west, but since Abu Khdeir's murder their lives have turned inward. Abed
Basit, a nurse from Beit Hanina, said most of the women in his family have
stopped going to work. He is reluctant to let his children leave the house,
fearful that they might be snatched off the streets."Yesterday it was
Mohammed," he said. "Tomorrow it could be my son."

Police have deployed heavily throughout East Jerusalem after Abu Khdeir's
abduction. At first they blocked all traffic, allowing only residents to enter;
the restrictions have since been eased, but checkpoints still dot the streets,
stopping cars with passengers that do not seem to belong. Policemen ask
drivers whether they are "Jewish or Arab."

Heavily armed officers also deployed inside Shuafat, the site of the worst
violence. But after a week in which more than 100 people were injured and
dozens arrested, residents viewed them as a provocation. Local youth shot
firecrackers over their heads, a Ramadan tradition now clearly aimed at
harassing the police. "Look at them, in the streets like this. Is this not
harassment? Is this not intimidation?" asked one man.
Outsiders have become suspect: On the main commercial strip in Beit
Hanina, a group of teenagers flagged down passing cars, addressing their

drivers in Arabic. During protests in Shuafat over the past week,

demonstrators whispered among themselves about musta'arabin, the
Israeli officers who disguise themselves as Palestinians. A news crew from
Channel 9, a Russian-language Israeli channel, was told to leave -- residents
said it helped to spread a baseless rumor that Abu Khdeir was killed in a
family dispute, for being homosexual.
"In a way, we see the occupation much more directly than the Palestinians
in the West Bank," said Samir, another resident of Shuafat. "They at least
have the Palestinian police. When we go down in the street, we have to deal
with the magav," he said, referring to the border police, an Israeli
paramilitary force with a reputation among Palestinians for acting
aggressively.
The unrest has often been portrayed in Israeli media as senseless rioting.
For Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, however, it was decades in the
making. "It's as if a pot of water has been warming over a candle for many
years, and Mohammed's death finally brought it to boil," Samir said.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, though most residents elected not
to become Israeli citizens. Instead they are treated as "permanent
residents," allowed to move and work freely but not to vote in national
elections, and are subject to losing their legal status if they move out of the
city. Their neighborhoods receive less funding than their counterparts
across town, and building permits are expensive and difficult to obtain. As a
result, a housing crisis has pushed population density to nearly twice the
level of the Jewish western side of the city. Schools are overcrowded, and
residents have far less access to health care, government services, and
even post offices.

"For 20 years we've heard about the peace process, and we got nothing,"
said Basit, the nurse. "We're treated like fifth-class citizens in this country,
and the Palestinians think we're spoiled, because we have Israeli IDs....
Everyone is against us. So maybe the only way to take action is to come
down in the streets."