Palestinians hospitalised after alleged Israeli mob beating

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — One of two Palestinians who claimed to have been savagely beaten by a Jewish mob in East Jerusalem was still in intensive care in an Israeli hospital on Sunday, two days after the alleged attack.

Relatives of Amir Shweiki 20, said on Sunday he was being treated at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital after being attacked along with Samer Mahfouz, also 20, as they walked near the Jewish settlement neighbourhood of Neve Yaakov on Friday evening.

A spokeswoman for the hospital told AFP that one of the men was “in intensive care but conscious and doing well” while the other was in a surgical ward.

She did not identify them by name on grounds of medical confidentiality.

Security spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP that the men alleged they were attacked by Jewish Israelis.

“They gave official testimony that they were attacked by a number of people,” he said.”We’re taking their claims very seriously.”

“The investigation is continuing,” he added. “We’re still looking for suspects.”

Haaretz newspaper quoted Mahfouz as saying that he and Shweiki were assaulted by about 12 men.

“They had sticks and iron bars and they hit us over the head,” he said.

Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem plunged to a new low on July 2 when 16-year-old Mohammad Abu Khdeir was snatched from an East Jerusalem street and later found burned alive.

Israeli forces arrested six alleged Jewish extremists as suspects and on July 17 charged three, freeing the others.

At an appearance in the Jerusalem district court on Sunday, Yosef Haim Ben-David, 29, who is charged along with two minors, declared to journalists: “I am the Messiah.”

In addition there have been violent Palestinian protests in and around the city as the toll of dead in Israel’s Gaza Strip offensive spirals daily.