Palestinians' Tires Slashed in Tense Jerusalem Neighborhood

Vandals slashed the tires on nearly a dozen Palestinian-owned vehicles overnight in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood where Jewish settlers have been waging a decades-long legal battle to evict Palestinians, residents said Friday.

CCTV footage shows three hooded men entering a fenced-off area of Sheikh Jarrah before stabbing the tires of parked cars. It was unclear who was responsible, but recent weeks have seen an escalation in settler violence toward Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli police say they are investigating the incident.

Protests and clashes over the threatened evictions helped spark the 11-day Gaza war in May. Two weeks ago, four Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah rejected a settlement floated by the Israeli Supreme Court that would delay their eviction for the next 15 years.

None of the 11 cars whose tires were deflated were owned by those Palestinian families, according to residents.

Sheikh Jarrah is in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community, and it considers the entire city its capital. It has portrayed the legal battle in Sheikh Jarrah as a local real-estate dispute.

The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state that includes the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel withdrew forces in 2005. They say the settlers, with backing from the state, are trying to drive them out of the city and change its identity.

In a separate development, Israel returned the bodies of two Palestinians killed while allegedly carrying out attacks. In recent years, Israel has had a policy of holding the remains of Palestinians it says were carrying out attacks.

The bodies of Isra Khazimia and Amjad Abu Sultan were returned on "humanitarian grounds," according to a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Israeli police shot and killed Khazimia in September, when she allegedly tried to stab an officer in Jerusalem's Old City. Abu Sultan, a teenager, was killed in October while attempting to throw firebombs at cars near an Israel settlement, the army said.

Israel says its policy of holding the remains of Palestinian attackers, established in 2015, is needed for deterrence of future attacks and for possible exchanges for the remains of two Israeli soldiers held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Human rights groups view the practice as a form of collective punishment that inflicts further pain on bereaved families.

The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, a Palestinian rights group, says Israel is holding the remains of around 80 Palestinians, many in secret cemeteries where their graves are marked by numbered plaques.