Masked gunmen shot dead a well-known Jewish-Arab actor and director on Monday in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian police and medics said.
The killing of Juliano Mer-Khamis, a rare figure straddling the bitter Israel-Palestinian divide, sparked outrage on both sides and was condemned by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as a “despicable crime.”
The 52-year-old director of the Freedom Theatre died when gunmen inside the town’s refugee camp opened fire on his car, hitting him with five bullets, Jenin police chief Mohammed Tayim said.
Witnesses said they saw two masked gunmen open fire on his car before speeding away.
An Israeli citizen, Mer-Khamis was born of a Jewish Israeli mother, Arna Mer, and a Palestinian Christian father, Saliba Khamis, and had lived in Jenin for seven years, officials said.
He was well-known for his political activism, as well as his acting and directing, and most recently starred in Miral, the story of two Palestinian women after the creation of Israel in 1948, which had its premiere at UN headquarters in New York.
Fayyad condemned the killing and said he had ordered the Palestinian security services to “work round the clock” to find the killers.
“This despicable crime will not be tolerated under any circumstances. It constitutes a severe violation of our principles and values and goes against our people’s morals and beliefs in co-existence,” Fayyad said in statement.
Mer-Khamis body was transferred to Israel.
Jenin Governor Qadura Musa said there may have been just one gunman.
“He was shot by a masked gunman who fired five bullets into the window of his car,” he said.
A woman from Bethlehem, who was in the car with Mer-Khamis, was wounded in the hand, he said.
Musa said he was not aware of any threats against Mer-Khamis, although his theater had been attacked in the past.
“We have not arrested anyone yet, but we have formed a crisis group from all the Palestinian security forces to investigate this crime and we hope to have some results within the coming hours,” he added.
With his mixed parentage, Mer-Khamis refused to describe himself as an Arab-Israeli, telling Israel’s army radio in 2009: “I am 100 percent Palestinian and 100 percent Jewish.”
The theater was first set up by his mother in 1987, when it was known as the Stone Theatre.
A committed peace activist, she had wanted to create a space where the children of Jenin could escape the violence of the first intifada, which had begun several months earlier.
Fifteen years later, the theater was destroyed during the second intifada when Israeli troops launched a massive operation to root out gunmen from the refugee camp — then a major militant stronghold.
It was rebuilt in 2004 by her actor son with the help of Zakaria Zubeidi, one of the most powerful militants in the city, who himself was part of the theater project.
“Everyone in the camp loved him, I don’t have any more words,” Zubeidi told Israel’s Channel 10 television after the killing.
In Ramallah, about 50 Palestinian artists and actors gathered in a central square to protest against the killing.
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