Forty-seven arrested after protest over kidnapping and murder of three Israelis turns violent • Jewish youths arrested for attempted attacks against Arabs • Legal Forum for Israel calls for death sentence for convicted terrorist murderers.
Edna Adato and Daniel Siryoti
Protesters arrested near the Chords Bridge in Jerusalem on Tuesday
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Photo credit: Oren Ben Hakun |
From the moment the bodies of Gil-ad Shaer, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Frenkel were found on Monday, tempers flared in Jerusalem. On Tuesday, a violent protest was held in the capital, with hundreds gathering by the Chords Bridge at the initiative of far-right figures Michael Ben-Ari, Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The protesters carried signs with slogans including "Revenge" and "Enough with the government's soft responses." The crowds also blocked the entrance to Jerusalem for a short while, before marching toward Mahane Yehuda market, where protesters attempted to attack Arab workers and clashed with police.
The clashes lasted several hours along the central Jaffa Street and in IDF Square and Zion Square. In IDF Square, police rescued an Arab teenager from an angry mob. The police determined the protest to be illegal and began to disperse the crowds by force.
Forty-seven protesters were arrested, most of them minors. There were no injuries.
Hours after the announcement that the bodies of the three kidnapped teens had been found, Jerusalem police detained a Jewish 17-year-old suspected of attacking an Arab taxi driver with tear gas. The same night, an Arab youth arrived at a hospital with minor injuries, saying he had been attacked by a group of Jewish youths. Police opened an investigation into the incident.
Later on, Mateh Yehuda police detained a Jewish man in his 20s after catching him spray-painting the words "Kahane was right," on a traffic sign on Route 38 near Beit Shemesh, in reference to the late extreme right-wing militant Rabbi Meir Kahane.
The attacks continued into Tuesday evening, when a masked Jewish teenager attempted to attack and Arab employee at a McDonald's restaurant on Hillel Street in Jerusalem. The youth was arrested. Another three Jewish youths were arrested after attacking an Arab who worked at an area of Jerusalem known as "Cat Square." No one was injured in either incident.
Dozens of youths established an outpost Tuesday on Hill 18 near Kiryat Arba-Hebron in response to the kidnapping and murder of the three teens.
"This is a clear response to the murder of children just because they are Jewish, and here, where life was cut short, we will bring life. They will never break us, and we will continue to build and grow all over the land of Israel," one youth said.
Earlier, Kiryat Arba-Hebron Council head Malachi Levinger called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon not to delay the approval of new construction in the area.
Meanwhile, a Haifa court extended the arrests of four Umm al-Fahm residents and one resident of the Abu Tor neighborhood in east Jerusalem, who are suspected of threatening the life of a 17-year-old Umm al-Fahm resident who condemned the kidnapping on his Facebook page. A Qalansawe resident in her 20s also reportedly received threats after condemning the murders of the three Jewish teens.
The Legal Forum for Israel approached Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz on Tuesday, requesting that he instruct Chief Military Advocate General Danny Efroni to have military courts from now on sentence to death terrorists convicted of murder, rather then sentence them to life in prison.
The forum said in a statement, "The current reality encourages terrorists to continue carrying out attacks against Israel."