Suspected shooter of Jewish activist buried in Jerusalem
Body of Mu’taz Hijazi, killed Thursday in a gunfight with police hours after he allegedly shot Yehudah Glick, handed over to family
A man suspected of carrying out the attempted assassination of a right-wing Jewish activist and killed by police in a shootout was buried late Thursday, as supporters and relatives marched through East Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court gave the go-ahead for the funeral Thursday after the family lawyer of Mu’taz Hijazi’s family requested that the suspected assassin’s body be transferred from the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute to Jerusalem for immediate burial.
The court accepted the family’s plea, despite the fact that no autopsy had been performed on Hijazi’s body.
Hijazi was killed in a gunfight with police early Thursday morning in the mixed Jewish-Arab Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Tor, after officers said he opened fire at them when they came to arrest him.
The body was handed over to the family at their Abu Tor home shortly before 11 p.m.
The funeral was held under heavy police presence, amid jitters in the capital that it could spark violence in restive neighborhoods of the capital.
The magistrate’s court accepted the concerns of security agencies and ruled that the funeral would be limited to 45 participants. Hijazi’s brother and father, who were arrested Thursday morning as part of the police and Shin Bet investigation into the shooting of Rabbi Yehudah Glick, were released during the day and attended the funeral.
After the body arrived at the family home, Palestinians began to gather at the site. Shouts of “The martyr didn’t shoot, he was killed in cold blood” were heard from the crowd, according to the news site Ynet.
Hijazi will be buried in an East Jerusalem cemetery near the Old City’s Lion’s Gate.
Hijazi is suspected of shooting Glick on Wednesday night as the Temple Mount activist left a conference in central Jerusalem’s Menachem Begin Heritage Center that dealt with promoting greater Jewish access to the Temple Mount.
Glick is known as a strident advocate of increased Jewish control over the site, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims.
Palestinian sources said that Hijazi served 11 years in an Israeli prison for terrorist activity during the Second Intifada, and was released in 2012.
He was reported to have originally been sentenced to six years, but was given an additional five after he attacked prison guards.
In a 2012 interview shortly after his release from prison, Hijazi told the Ramallah-based al-Quds News outlet that “God willing, I’ll be a thorn in the side of the Zionist project of Judaizing Jerusalem.
“I’m happy most of all to return to Jerusalem.”
Prior to shooting Glick, Hijazi allegedly approached the rabbi and told him, “Yehudah, I’m sorry, but the things you said hurt me.” Glick asked him what he meant, but the gunman did not respond, instead firing four shots at point-blank range, Channel 2 reported.
Glick remains in serious but stable condition Thursday after undergoing surgery in the abdomen, chest, hand and neck.
Islamic Jihad and Hamas both praised the shooting on Thursday. Islamic Jihad spokesman in Gaza Daud Shihab said that the “radical Zionist” got what was coming to him, and called him a dangerous inciter. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum praised the “heroic attack” and called on East Jerusalem residents and Palestinians in general to carry out more terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Fatah’s youth movement in Jordan also claimed in a message posted Thursday morning on the movement’s Facebook page that Hijazi belonged to the organization.
“With great pride Fatah salutes the martyr, its heroic ‘martyr of Jerusalem’ Mu’taz Hijazi, who carried out the assassination of Rabbi Yehudah Glick,” a poster on the Facebook page read.
A website affiliated with Islamic Jihad also claimed that Hijazi was one of its members. It published a bio of Hijazi on its website, noting that he was arrested in 2000, burned and destroyed “settler property in occupied Jerusalem,” attacked two jailers with a razor after they cursed him using the name of God, beat an interrogator who had tortured him during an investigation, frequented the al-Aqsa Mosque, and spent 10 of his 11 years in jail in solitary confinement.
Israeli security officials were investigating the possibility that Hijazi was responsible for the shooting of IDF soldier Chen Schwartz in Jerusalem on August 4, during this summer’s conflict with the Gaza Strip. Schwartz was shot twice in the stomach on Mount Scopus and was critically injured.
Adiv Sterman, Ilan Ben Zion and Elhanan Miller contributed to this report.
