TEL AVIV — Armed Palestinians stormed a hospital in the West Bank town of Jenin Nov. 22 and kidnapped an Israeli teenager on life support following a traffic accident in the area. The abduction in Jenin, a hotbed of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in recent months, nearly deteriorated into what one unnamed senior military official described as a “blood bath” and a full-scale Palestinian uprising (intifada).
The gunmen who kidnapped Tiran Fero, 18, a member of Israel’s Druze community, came to their senses in the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 24, after receiving an Israeli ultimatum that unless the body was returned troops would storm the town, and revealed the location of the body. Palestinian mediators rushed to the site, loaded the body into a Red Crescent ambulance and drove it to the Jenin offices of the Palestinian intelligence service, from where it was taken to the Salem crossing between the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel. There it was handed over to Israel’s military coordinator with the PA, Maj. Gen. Ghasan Alyan, himself a member of Israel’s 150,000-member Druze community. The body’s return elicited a huge sigh of relief. The blood bath had been postponed, for now.
“This affair proves that it is too soon to write off the PA,” a senior Israeli military source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, adding that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave a direct order to his people to do all in their power to obtain the body’s return. “Ultimately, we were in contact with the PA and they came through, big time,” the source said.
What began as a local traffic accident ballooned into a major international incident, when Ferro and a Druze friend, both 12th graders from the Israeli town of Dalyat al-Carmel crossed into Jenin to buy a sound system for their new car and crashed the vehicle. Ferro’s friend was taken to the Salem crossing and flown from there to a nearby Israeli hospital. Ferro, whose condition was more severe, was taken to a nearby Palestinian hospital and placed on life support. His father and other family members crossed into Jenin and rushed to his side.
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