Despicable, Those Crimes

"We don't know yet the motives or the identities of the perpetrators, but we will. We will bring to justice the criminals responsible for this despicable crime whoever they may be."
Murder, riots, incitement, vigilantism -- they have no place in our democracy."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Man inspects the damage to a house following a rocket attack by militants from the Gaza Strip in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, on July 3, 2014. Photo by AFP

While Israeli military troops have assembled on the border with the Gaza strip, in response to an ongoing barrage of rocket fire from Gazan terrorists, in East Jerusalem clashes continue as Palestinians rage against the Israeli occupation, Israeli police, Israeli military. Palestinians in Israel are Israeli citizens, for them there is no occupation, and the Israeli police and military protect their freedom and well-being as they do that of other citizens.

With the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers who had been travelling from their West Bank seminaries to their homes before they were taken hostage and their lives destroyed, the uneasy relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinians have become inflamed to the point of outright anarchy. The two-week search for the abducted teens was a frantic affair, undertaken in an aura of high emotion, and not cold calculation.

It was a crime, abducting the three teens, but for the most part everyone, both Jew and Arab, hoped they would be found intact and returned to their families. For compassionate reasons the Arab population as much as for concerns about their own welfare should the worst possible scenario present itself with their deaths, it was hoped that matters could be settled. When the three corpses of the students were discovered, there were Palestinians who celebrated.

Palestinian youths have clashed with Israeli police in East Jerusalem for three consecutive days

They may now be many of the same Palestinians who are rioting, hurling rocks at Israeli police and military, along with incendiary devices. Hamas, denying responsibility for the abduction which they praised, let alone the murders, warn Israel not to consider entering Gaza as they did in 2012. In 2012 Mohammed Morsi arranged a ceasefire; in 2014, President el-Sisi is attempting to arrange the same, with Hamas which accuses the current Egyptian government of slandering and harassing them.

Which hasn't stopped them from the continuing barrage from Gaza into Israel, using more powerful, longer-range rockets to send home the message that though they agree to ceasefires now and again their central and final aim is the destruction of Israel. And because projectiles hit homes in Sderot, Israel has forwarded tanks, artillery and ground forces to the border area.

"Everything we are doing is to de-escalate the situation, but on the other hand be prepared for actions that can develop if they do not de-escalate", warned Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, characterizing the military movement on the border as defensive.

According to Israeli military sources 34 rockets/mortar shells were fired Thursday, exploding inside Israel. About 130 rockets have been fired by Palestinian terrorists toward Israel in the last few weeks with the air force responding on 70 targets with airstrikes in Gaza. Two senior Hamas officials insist they have "no interest" in escalation, hoping for the ceasefire to be restored.

"Israel has been attacking Gaza since the kidnapping of the teens" said one Hamas official. "Once Israel stops attacking Gaza, we are willing to immediately preserve the truce." And in East Jerusalem masked Palestinian youth continue to clash with Israeli security forces in rage over the death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the 16-year-old boy abducted from his East Jerusalem neighbourhood and found murdered.

In Shuafat, Abu Khdeir's family set up a mourning tent, where their son is described as a "brave martyr". His funeral took place on Friday when the boy's body was released from an Israeli forensic laboratory. And the charges by Palestinians that he was murdered by hard-line Israelis in revenge for the deaths of the three Israeli teens continues to exacerbate the raw feelings of anger and blame of both Jew and Arab.

Jews themselves are hotly debating whether the Palestinian Arab youth's death represents an avenging atrocity in response to the Jewish boys' deaths. Eventually details describing the reality of truth and fact will emerge but irrespective of what those emerging facts will represent, nothing will change the blazing distrust and blame and hatred that keeps Jews and Arabs at war with each other.