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©Washington Post
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 10, 2001
JERUSALEM -- A pair of fresh-faced Israeli teenagers skipped school Tuesday and went strolling near their homes in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank. One was a U.S. citizen, one wore glasses and neither was old enough to shave.
Early Wednesday their battered bodies were found in a rocky cave in the barren Judean desert barely a half-mile from their home. They had been bludgeoned with bowling ball-size rocks and were described by Israeli police as so mutilated that one could be identified only by his fingerprints.
The murders of Koby Mandell, 13, and Yossi Ishran, 14, which police immediately blamed on Palestinians, coincided with a spike in clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their gruesome deaths served as another reminder of the conflict's capacity to shock even after seven months of sustained violence and more than 500 deaths, most of them Palestinian.
"This was not the work of humans," said Pini Birnbaum, an Israeli volunteer who helped bring the bodies out of the cave.
The slayings followed by only 24 hours the killing of a 4-month-old Palestinian girl in a Gaza refugee camp. Together with the latest gunbattles and a report that Israeli bulldozers again entered Palestinian-controlled territory in the Gaza Strip, the cycle of death seemed to bury even the most remote hopes of renewed peace efforts.
Mandell was born in Israel but lived in Silver Spring, Md., until the mid 1990s, when his parents moved back to Israel and became citizens. They lived in Tekoa, a Jewish settlement built 12 miles south of Jerusalem on Palestinian-inhabited land captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War.
Much of the world regards the settlements as illegal under international law barring conquering powers from settling land captured from another country; Palestinians say that continued building of Jewish settlements proves Israel is not serious about making peace. But to children who live in the red-roofed houses at Tekoa, the steep ravines and Hariton cave a half-mile from their fenced-in settlement are a back yard.
Many would hike down to the 3-mile-long cave for fun. That's apparently what Mandell and Ishran did early Tuesday, telling only a friend of their plan to play hooky. When they did not come home at the normal time, their parents thought they may have gone to a settlers' rally in Jerusalem. It was not until late Tuesday, when the boys had still not appeared, that a search party set out.
Police said the boys had been beaten by at least three killers who used large rocks. They said the killers dipped their hands in their victims' blood and smeared it on the walls of the cave, where a monk is said to have lived in the 4th century. Israeli police arrested at least 15 Palestinians for questioning.
Police spokesman Rafi Yaffe said it appeared the boys were killed in a chance encounter. He said it was not clear whether the killings were linked to the theft of dozens of goats from Tekoa in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he was "deeply shocked" by the murders, which he blamed on Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for having refused to rein in violence.
Asked whether Arafat was still a potential negotiating partner, the prime minister said that "anyone who causes the killing of Israeli citizens cannot be a partner." If violence stopped, Israel would be ready to resume peace talks, Sharon said.
Jewish settler leaders demanded that Sharon declare Arafat an enemy of Israel and work to bring down the Palestinian Authority.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the killings "horrible, brutal," adding, "Our chief concern at this point is to be in touch with the families." And Pope John Paul II said in Malta that he was saddened by "news from the Holy Land of terrible violence even against innocent young people."
Asked about the killings, Arafat called attention to a 3-month-old Palestinian girl who was wounded Wednesday as she was carried in her mother's arms, apparently hit by shrapnel during a gunbattle between Israeli and Palestinian forces. However, Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian official, told a news conference in English that "killing civilians is a crime, whether on the Palestinian or the Israeli side." The comment was not reported in Arabic-language Palestinian media.
Mandell is at least the third American citizen to have died in the seven-month uprising against continued Israeli occupation in a third of Gaza and 80 percent of the West Bank. At least 409 Palestinians, 77 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed.
The slaying of the teens intensified pressure on Sharon to take tougher action. Jewish settler leaders said the proper response is to accelerate construction in the settlements.
Sharon supports expansion of the settlements, many of which he helped found. In that he is opposed by the Bush administration, which regards expansion as a provocation. Responding to an Israeli newspaper report, the State Department this week slammed Israeli plans to channel more government funds to the settlements. Sharon insists no such decision has been taken yet.
In Gaza, Israeli troops made two incursions into Palestinian-controlled territory, according to Palestinian police. In one case an Israeli bulldozer razed a one-story home on the outskirts of the Rafah refugee camp, close to the border with Egypt, witnesses said. During the demolition, Israeli tanks fired machine guns toward the area and a tank shell hit a Palestinian police station, the witnesses said.
The Palestinian baby and her mother were injured by shrapnel from that shelling.
Palestinian police said Israeli troops also entered Palestinian territory east of Gaza City, and razed Palestinian farm land. The Israeli army said it was looking into the incidents.
-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.