Mohammad Abu Khdair, the 16 year old Palestinian who it's assumed was murdered in revenge for the killing of three Israeli teens, was burned to death. Burns covered 90% of his body, ranging from first to fourth degree. Fire dust was found in his respiratory trace meaning
the victim had "inhaled this material while he was burnt alive".
The direct cause of death was burns as a result of fire
He also had a head wound which we can only hope means he was unconscious as the flames engulfed him.
The results of the Israeli autopsy have not been officially released. Saber al-Aloul, the director of the Palestinian forensic institute, was in attendance during the examination by Israeli doctors. The reports come from statements by the Palestinian Authority but this is fueling the anger in East Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine. The Israeli failure to release their results have increased belief that the Israeli police are inactive or worse. Also feeding this mood is the revelation that the car that abducted Abu Khadad was suspected before his kidnap.
The Hyundai sedan used to kidnap Abu Khdair was used in the attempted abduction of another Palestinian child one day earlier, Channel 10 reported this week.
In turn, that feeds into the feelings of distrust of the Israeli police investigation and the suspicion it is a cover-up; From the
Independent yesterday:
Jerusalem is one of the most security-conscious cities in the world and junctions and roads are covered by an extensive network of CCTV cameras yet Israeli police continue to insist they did not know whether the killers were Palestinian or Israeli.
Micky Rosenfeld, the police spokesman, said he had no new information to disclose on the investigation and that police were still trying to establish whether the killing was criminal or nationalistic. The investigation, he said, would “take time”.
Raviv Drucker, a leading Israeli investigative journalist, criticised the police for “not revealing any information”. “Their management of this crisis is horrible. They need to have an Arab spokesman briefing the press every six hours and saying everything they can. You need to put out information to kill rumours. At the rate they are going, even if this turns out to be a criminal act, it might not matter any more,” he said.
Further allegations of Israeli police brutality are circulating on social media, further inflaming sentiment. From
Al Jazeera:
Photos of Abu Khdair's 15-year-old cousin, Tariq Abu Khdair, who was allegedly beaten while in Israeli police custody, circulated on social media on Friday. Tariq, who is a US citizen, was released from custody to go to hospital, but security officers returned to the hospital to take him to a court hearing.
Some Middle East commentators are moving to a "when, not if" view of there being a new Intifada. Incidents of violence against vulnerable individuals are continuing on both sides:
In Qalansuwa, northeast of Tel Aviv, there was one report of a Jewish man dragged out of his car by masked Palestinians.
The man was unharmed, but his vehicle was torched.
A growing number of videos posted on social media show assaults across the country: in one, posted on Wednesday, a passenger on a bus tries to attack a Palestinian, then assaults the soldiers who try to defend him.
Online campaigns calling for "revenge" have garnered thousands of supporters.
The Independent reports that at the the funeral, some compared Abu Khdeir to Mohammed al-Dura whose death fueled passions in 2000 at the start of the second Intifada. He was the Gaza Strip child whose death from IDF gunfire as his father sought to shield him was shown worldwide. It became a symbol of Israeli cruelty for the Palestinians.
The usual round of protest with crude weapons answered with tear gas, rubber bullets and other weaponry has resumed in earnest. Gaza is again being bombed in response to home-made rockets. Israeli politicians are weeping crocodile tears for Abu Khdeir and ordering new settlements. The USA is seen by the Palestinians as far from an "honest broker" as the Embassy appears to be ignoring the alleged beating in custody of one of their citizens (Abu Khdeir's cousin) by Israeli police. The "Peace Process" is dead. We are a week into Ramadan and tempers get frayed at the end of a hot day's fast.
The situation is like the parched California hills - one spark could set the whole aflame. Real action by the Israeli police to identify those suspected of Abu Khdeir's killers would calm the immediate outbreak. Failure to bring all the killers, Settlers and Palestinians, to real and equal justice will inflame it. We may already be past the "tipping point" but the situation today is very different from the last Intifada. All of the surrounding Arab countries apart from Jordan are in turmoil. There is a large group of militant Muslim extremists in Syria and Iraq who would see their involvement "to free Al Quds" as holy war. The Syrian regime may well turn a blind eye to their movement towards the Golan Heights. Equally the new Egyptian President would not mind if his Egyptian Brotherhood problem went away - through Israel's porous southern border where they are already having problems with refugees from other parts of Africa.
When they were selling the second Iraq war, Bush and Blair claimed it would help stabilize the Middle East. Like the claims about WMD, some of us had doubts from the start. Few of us probably thought just how wrong the claim was. Now the fallout from the day Bush let loose the Dogs of "Shock and awe" is threatening to inflame, not stabilize the whole Middle East; including Israel whose politicians so vigorously cheered from the sidelines.