Jebl Mukaber residents tense after assailant identified as local teen

By ABE SELIG
Police set up small checkpoints on either side of the Mughrabi home in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebl Mukaber on Tuesday, checking all traffic going in and out of the area while keeping an eye on the family's home, preventing the crowd that had gathered there from erecting a mourning tent. Friends and family of Kassem Mughrabi, who was shot dead after he drove into a crowd of pedestrians near Jaffa Gate on Monday night, gathered in and around the house as a recorded Islamic prayer echoed in the background. The mourners eyed outsiders suspiciously, and whispers about a possible house demolition or reprisals from right-wing Jewish groups made their way through the crowd. Kassem's cousin, Raed Mughrabi, said that he did not believe media reports claiming the 19 year-old perpetrator of Monday night's attack was a member of Hamas, saying only he believed the incident was an accident, as other members of the Mughrabi family had asserted earlier in the day. "It was a car accident," Mughrabi said, squinting into the sun. "It was just a car accident and they shot him and killed him. He was a normal person - all he wanted to do was work." But then Mughrabi seemed to contradict himself, verifying reports that Kassem had been upset after a cousin had spurned his marriage proposal, and decided soon after to perpetrate an attack against Jews. "It's true," Mughrabi said. "It hurt him that she said no - he was very upset." Other young men outside the home said they knew Kassem as a normal young man who wanted to work. "He had just bought new clothes for Ramadan," said one of Kassem's friends from school. "He was looking for a job - he just wanted to work, I don't know what happened to him." But the mood in Jebl Mukaber was tense nonetheless, even with the streets mostly empty for Ramadan, and few stores open for business. One woman, who pulled up in a van full of passengers, told a reporter that "they better not find out you're a Jew down there," before she drove off.