The Return of Tinan Fero’s Body: How it Happened

Jerusalem, 24 November, 2022 (TPS) -- A person who was involved in the negotiations for the return of the body of the Druze boy Tiran Fero told Tazpit Press Service this morning that Sheikh Raed Salah played a key role in resolving the standoff.

The source told TPS that requests for Saleh’s involvement came from Druze religious leaders.

Saleh took advantage of his connections with officials in the Gaza Strip and with influential figures in Qatar and discussed with them the religious aspect of the kidnapping incident, which put pressure on the gunmen holding Pero’s body and other armed groups in the Jenin area.

Alongside the pressure coming from the Islamic Movement, Gaza and Qatar, various political parties also pressed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resolve the incident.

Popular opinion in Jenin turned against the gunmen when it became apparent that Fero was a high school student from the Druze village of Daliyat al Karmel and not an undercover IDF soldier as initially rumored. In local radio and television programs, Palestinian officials said that it should be taken into account that Fero was Druze and not Jewish.

A Palestinian security official told TPS that the threat of IDF action and the closure of nearby crossings threatened to suffocate Jenin weighed heavily on the negotiations.

The body was transferred to Israel on Thursday at the Salem crossing on early Thursday morning. The funeral is scheduled for Thursday afternoon in Daliyat al Karmel on what would have been Fero’s 18th birthday.

Fero was injured in a car crash in Jenin on Wednesday. Due to his critical condition, he was evacuated to the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin.

Fero’s family says he was killed when the gunmen disconnected him from medical equipment.

The Islamic Movement in Israel was founded in 1971 as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement split over participation in Israel’s 1996 elections. Israel banned the more radical Northern Faction in 2015 and arrested Salah, its leader for inciting violence on the Temple Mount.

The Southern Movement, on the other hand, went into politics; in 2021, its Ra’am party, led by Mansour Abbas, became the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition. Abbas denies that Ra’am has any links to terror and says that if there were such ties, Israeli authorities would have already banned the party.