Reuters

Jerusalem

Mohamed Abu Khadr, a slightly-built youth with piercing brown eyes, loved Arab folk dancing. Naftali Fraenkel, a strapping, red-haired youngster, strummed Hebrew folk music on his guitar.

But the Palestinian and the Israeli, both dead at 16, were sons of a land without harmony and now seem to have been doomed  to share in the tragedy of yet more young lives cut short in a decades-old conflict.

Mohamed’s charred body was found in a Jerusalem forest on Wednesday, hours after he was abducted near his home in the city and slain in what his family and most Palestinians believe was an Israeli revenge killing.

A day earlier, Naftali and two fellow Jewish seminary students had been buried - killed, Israel says, by Hamas Islamists who kidnapped them while the three were hitch-hiking in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on June 12.

“My son was always nice to people, always smiling,” Mohamed’s mother, Suha, told reporters at the family home in Shuafat, an Arab neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

Mohamed, who was laid to rest yesterday, studied electronics at vocational school, and collected all of the latest gadgets. He had a passion for music and belonged to a dance troupe popular for performing the Debka folk dance.

“He was a calm boy, he hated trouble and problems,” said Saeed Abu Khudair, a cousin who runs a fast-food restaurant in Jerusalem. “I can’t believe I’m using the word ‘was’.”

Naftali, who lived in Nof Ayalon, a village in Israel about a 30-minute drive from Mohamed’s home, went to school in a West Bank settlement. On breaks from his religious studies, he played basketball and ping-pong, friends said.

“We still haven’t digested the loss. We can’t believe it happened,” said classmate Elkana Naveh, 17.

Naftali, a dual US-Israeli national, also enjoyed singing Hebrew folk songs, accompanying himself on the guitar, and played the flute - showing a love for music that his mother, Rachel, remembered in her eulogy at Naftali’s funeral.

“Rest in peace, my boy. We will make sure to go on singing without you, but will continue to hear your voice forever, within us.”