At least 4,000 gathered on Friday afternoon to attend the funeral of Omar Salim Al-Qawasmi, 66, executed by Israeli forces early that morning, in what military officials later admitted was a case of mistaken identity.
Hamas and Fatah officials joined in the event, hosted following the Friday prayers at a Hebron mosque.
The joint participation followed a day of accusations by party officials, with Hamas accusing the PA of being responsible for the death, and accusing the PA government of coordinating with Israel ahead of the incident.
Al-Qawasmi was killed during an arrest raid that saw five Hamas men, who were released by PA forces the day before, detained by Israeli forces.
He was the uncle of one of the men released and re-detained.
The man, Wael Al-Bitar, was being hunted by the Israeli forces who broke into the home, and was arrested moments after Al-Qawasmi was shot.
Al-Bitar, who was detained in June 2008 by what witnesses at the time said were Israeli forces.
The arrest followed a violent standoff as Israeli soldiers surrounded and demolished Al-Bitar’s home, after demanding he give up a man who was staying in the building and stood accused of assisting a resistance fighter.
The home was demolished around Al-Bitar, and the alleged fighter he was harbouring killed in the demolitions.
Later reports said Al-Bitar was detained by PA intelligence officials.
Israeli military officials claimed that Al-Bitar assisted in the planning of a 2008 attack that killed one Israeli woman, and was behind the planning of several attacks that were thwarted.
Al-Bitar and five others detained by the PA for ‘security-related’ offences, were released after weeks of negotiations between prison officials, the PA and Hamas.
Following the release, Hamas officials said they were pleased that their men were no longer being held without cause.
Hamas leader Aziz Dweik, former head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, spoke at the funeral of Al-Qawasmi, and called the incident a ‘stupid mistake’, and condemned the detention of the men, who had lobbied for their release with a weeks-long hunger strike.
Instead of the Hamas men, he said, Israeli forces ‘shot an old man 13 times in the face’.
Dweik said Israel’s ‘message is clear; they want nothing for for the Palestinians’, and accused the Israeli government of trying to sabotage unity efforts.
The release of six men on Thursday was done on order of President Mahmoud Abbas, after receiving requests from Hamas officials in Gaza, Damascus and a special call from a Qatari Emir asking for their freedom.
Six were released, five were detained by Israel the following day. A sixth returned home to Jenin, where he remains free.
Hebron Governor Kamel Hamid, who congratulated the men on their freedom the day before, only hours after being mobbed by settlers in the Tel Rumeida area of the city, said, ‘Israel wants to destroy Arab and Palestinian efforts for peace, it wants the settlers to run the place.’
Also present at the funeral was a relative of the slain man, Khaled Fahd Al-Qawasmi, who holds the Ministerial post for Local Governance, members of the PLC with both Fatah and Hamas faction leaders and PA security heads, who had been instrumental in securing the release of the men.
Fatah denounced the arrest of the Hamas men.
A statement from the party said the PA had been clear with Hamas, and had warned that the men could be arrested by the Israeli military.
The Fatah statement said the effort to release the men was done in the context of unity efforts, and in the hopes that it would ‘remove any excuses for deepening the divide’ between Hamas and Fatah.
The shooting of the elderly Palestinian man was a botched assassination attempt by Israeli forces, and represents an escalation against Palestinians by Israeli forces, a Hamas spokesman said on Friday following the death.
At a mass rally organised in Gaza on Friday afternoon, Hamas leader Ismail Radwan called for an end to PA-Israel security coordination, asking, ‘who holds the ultimate security decision in the West Bank?’
‘The natural and national response on the crime is to stop security coordination and to release the political prisoners and to unleash the resistance to respond to it,’ he said.
On Friday, hours after the shooting of Al-Qawasmi and the detention of Al-Bitar and four others, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the ‘crime reflects the danger of the political arrests carried out by the Palestinian Authority,’ and said he held both the PA and Israel responsible for the death.
He urged the PA to stop all political arrests and to protect Palestinians.
Abbu Zuhri demanded that the Arab League release the PA of its obligation to continue talks with Israel, and stop ‘giving Israel cover’ for its actions against the resistance.
Before the detentions and slaying of one of the Hamas member’s relatives, Hamas officials said their release would ‘create a positive atmosphere towards Palestinian conciliation’.
Speaking from Gaza, Hamas leader Ayman Taha said he hoped the release ‘will be just the start, and we will see the release of all of the political prisoners in PA prisons’.
Taha added that Hamas considered political arrest an unacceptable, a ‘prohibited national crime, particularly at this stage’, explaining that arrests deepen division in the Palestinian community.
Islamic Jihad leaders said in a statement on Friday that the movement held Israel fully responsible for the death of Al-Qawasmi, executed in his bed in a case of mistaken identity.
‘The resistance will respond in the correct fashion,’ the statement said, calling the incident a ‘dangerous crime that reveals the fragile state of security in the West Bank’.
The movement blamed the situation on ‘commitments the Palestinian Authority has with the occupation, under which none of its security men dare defend the people’.
The level of security coordination between the West Bank and Israel has ‘reached a dangerous level’, the statement said.
• Israeli forces blocked off the entrances to the central West Bank village of Bil’in on Friday, ahead of a protest that drew hundreds, after a call to mourn the death of a local woman who suffered tear-gas inhalation and died the week before.
Jawaher Abu Rahma, 36, was watching the protest on 31 December 2010, inhaled tear-gas and collapsed.
Israeli military officials, after first accusing Palestinian protesters of lying about the circumstances of her death, initiated a full investigation into the incident.
The woman’s mother, Soubhiya, led hundreds in a memorial event for her daughter, which began ahead of the regular Friday protests in the village.
The protests demand a halt to land confiscation, and have done so each week since Israel began construction its separation barrier on village agricultural lands.
Organised by Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall, protesters marched toward the barrier calling for its destruction.
The group was met with the firing of tear-gas canisters, despite the ongoing investigation into Jawaher’s death by the noxious gas.
Israeli military estimates said some 300 were at the event, and a spokesman noted that there was no change in the riot dispersal means used.
When demonstrators reached the site of the wall, organisers said, they ‘were met with a shower of tear gas and sound bombs, rubber bullets, and the use of wastewater contaminated with chemicals’.
Two people, a statement said, were rendered unconscious by tear gas, while dozens of others suffered from teargas inhalation, ‘which was used intensively’, the statement said.
One demonstrator managed to remove part of the separation barrier apparatus, prompting Israeli forces to advance toward the village.
Organisers said at that point, ‘Palestinian youth threw stones at the soldiers in an effort to stop them, but were forced to retreat.’
East of Bil’in, An-Nabi Saleh residents also held a weekly demonstration, calling for an end to land confiscations by a growing Israeli settlement built on village lands.
Demonstrators reported difficulty accessing the village, facing new iron gates installed at the entrance to the area.
Protesters said Israeli soldiers met them with tear-gas canisters, rubber-coated bullets and pepper spray.
One protester, Oday Abdul Hafith Tamimi, 20, was said to have been assaulted and detained by Israeli forces.
During the protest, soldiers entered the home of Abdul Wahhab Tamimi in what appeared to be an arrest raid targeting his son.
Demonstrators refused entry to the force and a fight between the sides broke out, witnesses said.
An Israeli military spokesman said one man was detained for rock throwing, but said soldiers did not report using riot dispersal mechanisms in the area.