Despite ban, Israel returns Palestinian attacker’s body

Israel on Friday returned the body of a Palestinian attacker shot dead earlier this week, days after Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan ordered a freeze on handing over the remains of terrorists from East Jerusalem to their families.

According to Channel 10, the body was that of a Palestinian woman killed by Border Police guards Monday as she attempted to stab officers at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem.

A police spokesperson said troops manning the Ras Bidu checkpoint in the West Bank opened fire after the woman pulled out a knife and advanced toward a border guard.

The original decision to hand over bodies came after a months-long campaign by the families, including through appeals to the High Court of Justice. Police said they feared the funerals for the deceased attackers, who were killed as they stabbed, shot or rammed Israelis with cars over the past seven months, would turn into mass rallies in support of further terror attacks.

Police agreed to release the bodies after the families committed to hold private subdued funerals that would not include calls for further attacks.

But Erdan intervened on Tuesday, a day after the Ynet news site aired footage of a funeral in East Jerusalem that showed a crowd of some 200 residents demonstrating outside the cemetery with cries of “Allahu akbar” (God is great) and “In spirit and blood we will redeem you, martyr.”

Border Police forces prevented the demonstrators from entering the cemetery and taking part in the burial of Alaa abu Jamal, a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber who carried out a deadly attack last October in the capital.

“I have just seen the outrageous images from the funeral,” Erdan wrote on Facebook on Tuesday, “in which the police’s conditions and the terrorist’s family’s commitments were breached. The [family] held a mass funeral, with cries of incitement and support for terror.

“The families of the terrorists lied to the High Court of Justice, and it’s a shame that the High Court believed them and pressured the police to hand over the bodies,” he added.

“I hope the High Court is exposed to these images of incitement, which must not be allowed to recur anywhere, and certainly not in Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.”

According to Israel Radio and Ynet, police officials said Tuesday that the family fulfilled its commitments, noting that the large crowd and the calls in support of terror came from outside the cemetery, and were filmed as the body was taken from a nearby mosque toward the burial site.

Asked on Twitter about the contradictory assessments, Erdan responded in a tweet: “In the final analysis, there was a rally of incitement and support for terror. There’s no doubt that the crowd that showed up at the funeral was invited or knew of it through the family and organizers. That’s a violation.”

He added: “For our purposes, there’s no difference if the audience is standing inside the cemetery fence or outside it.”