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Israeli Teenagers Found Dead; Hamas Under Pressure Israeli Teenagers Found Dead; Hamas Under Pressure
(about 4 hours later)
JERUSALEM — A pair of tefillin, the leather phylacteries Jews use for morning prayer; a single sandal; shattered spectacles. These were among the clues that led to Monday’s grisly discovery of the bodies of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped June 12 as they hitchhiked home from their West Bank yeshivas. JERUSALEM — One suspect took 10 years to complete a college degree in Shariah law, according to relatives, because his studies kept being interrupted by stints in Israeli prison. The other quit school at 13, has been in poor health since a swimming accident put him in a coma in 2007, and has worked as a blacksmith, a porter, and a clothes salesman, several people who know him said.
“It was kind of a puzzle,” a senior Israeli security official said Tuesday morning, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do otherwise. “There was no one golden piece of information.” The two Palestinian men, Israel’s prime suspects in the June 12 kidnapping and killing of three teenagers, live perhaps 500 yards apart in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city, and pray together dawn and dusk in a neighborhood mosque. Amer Abu Aisha, 33, the swimmer, frequented the barbershop owned by Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, the college graduate, who learned to cut hair in prison and was unable to get a job as an imam — in part, an uncle said, because of “his political affiliation.”
Funerals for the three teenagers — Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and 19-year-old Eyal Yifrach — were underway Tuesday afternoon, with a joint service and burial planned for 5:30 p.m. in Modi’in, a suburb between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Both the Israeli cabinet and the Palestinian Authority leadership had scheduled meetings in the evening to plan responses to the developments. “They are familiar with Hamas, everybody knows they support Hamas, but I can’t say they are officially part of the Hamas military wing,” said Shlomi Eldar, whose 2011 book, “Getting to Know Hamas,” includes material about members of the Qawasmeh family carrying out 13 suicide bombings in the second Palestinian intifada. “I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.”
Israel pressed forward with its search for its two prime suspects in the abduction, Hebron residents affiliated with the militant Islamic Hamas movement who both have done several stints in Israeli jails and have not been seen since June 12. At the same time, Israeli forces are also focused on the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip, where they launched what Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an army spokesman, called “a substantial strike” before 4 a.m. Tuesday, dropping 34 bombs on a Hamas compound in the southern city of Rafah, after Gaza militants fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel on Monday. A day after the grisly discovery of the teenagers’ bodies buried under rocks in an open field, Israeli security forces turned their full attention Tuesday to searching for the suspects, who relatives and neighbors said have not been seen since the abduction. As Israel’s cabinet and the Palestinian leadership met late into Tuesday night to consider response to the killings, militants in the Gaza Strip once again lobbed rockets toward Israel, continuing an escalation in which Israel pummeled a Hamas compound in southern Gaza with 34 bombs in the early morning.
It remains unclear whether the kidnappers had planned to kill the teenagers, or decided to do so rather than hold them hostage after one of the Israelis managed to make a cellphone call to a police hotline. “Anyone who thinks that they can achieve anything by using terrorism against us will continue to be mistaken and will achieve the opposite results,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters before the cabinet convened. “We will neither rest nor slacken until we reach the last of them, and it does not matter where they try to hide.”
The two-minute call — played on Israeli television Tuesday after a gag order on its contents was lifted — was considered a prank by the police, delaying the start of the search. On the recording, Gilad says calmly and quietly in Hebrew, “I’ve been kidnapped,” and then one of the men believed to be one of his captors says — also in Hebrew — “Head down!” and, in Arabic, orders him to hand over the phone. The deteriorating situation came as tens of thousands of Israelis thronged to individual funeral services for the murdered teenagers — Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19 — and then to their side-by-side burial, wrapped in Israeli flags, in the city of Modiin. Having become unifying national symbols, they were eulogized, like heroes and statesmen, by Mr. Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Israel’s chief rabbis, as well as by family members.
The police operator says, “Hello” a bunch of times, then, “Where are you?” as an Israeli radio station plays in the background. Many Israeli journalists have said they can hear a gunshot during the call, though it was not apparent in the part that was broadcast. “God’s ways are mysterious, and I don’t know why you have left us so young,” Naftali’s father, Avi, said at his son’s service in the religious kibbutz Shaalvim. “But your death has led this entire nation forward, and there is some comfort.”
Only hours after the teenagers were reported missing, a police spokesman said Tuesday, the authorities found the tefillin in the burned-out hull of a Hyundai i35 that was stolen from central Israel a month before. DNA evidence from the car, which had been left in the West Bank village of Dura, perhaps a 20-minute ride from where the teenagers had last been seen trying to hitchhike home, was quickly matched to their parents. The teenagers were last seen about 10:15 p.m. on June 12 as they tried to hitchhike home from their yeshivas in West Bank settlements. The authorities believe they were killed shortly after climbing into a Hyundai i35 that had been stolen from central Israel a month earlier, perhaps even as Gilad managed, at 10:25 p.m., to make a cellphone call to a police hotline.
The authorities, unsure if the mission was rescue or recovery, used intelligence gathered through signal interception and interrogations of arrested Palestinians and deployed thousands of soldiers and civilians to comb caves and cisterns in the vast stretch of hilly fields around Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city. The two-minute call — broadcast on Israeli television and radio Tuesday after an order on its contents was lifted — was considered a prank by the police, delaying the start of the search. On the recording, Gilad says calmly and quietly in Hebrew, “I’ve been kidnapped,” then one of his captors says — also in Hebrew — “Head down!” and, in Arabic, orders him to hand over the phone.
A break came Thursday: the discovery of a sandal that looked like one of the boys’, said the police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld. Then, just before 1 a.m. on Sunday, the police brought a pair of spectacles found in the field to an eyeglasses store, where the owner, Shalom Friedman, confirmed that he had sold them to Mr. Yifrach. There are then what sound like gunshots, and a painful groan, before a police operator repeatedly asks, “Hello?” and then, “Where are you?”
The first significant clue, a spokesman for the Israel Police said, was found the next morning: In the burned-out hull of the Hyundai was a pair of tefillin, the leather-bound texts that religious Jews like these youths strap on for prayers. DNA evidence from the car, which had been left in Hebron suburb of Dura, not far from the hitchhiking post, was quickly matched to their parents.
After nearly two weeks combing caves and cisterns, another break came Thursday, when searchers found a sandal that looked like one of the boys’, the police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld said. Then, just before 1 a.m. Sunday, the police brought a pair of spectacles found in the field to an eyeglasses store, where the owner, Shalom Friedman, confirmed that he had sold them to Mr. Yifrach.
The eyeglasses were “completely smashed,” Mr. Friedman said in a video interview posted on Tuesday on the Israeli news site Ynet. “It was a chilling moment.”The eyeglasses were “completely smashed,” Mr. Friedman said in a video interview posted on Tuesday on the Israeli news site Ynet. “It was a chilling moment.”
Finally, on Monday at about 5 p.m., amid agricultural lands worked by the family of one of the suspects, search teams including volunteer hiking guides removed a bush that looked out of place, then a pile of stones, and then three bodies, whose identities were confirmed by forensics at about 3 a.m. Tuesday. Finally, on Monday at about 5 p.m., amid agricultural lands worked by the Qawasmeh family, search teams including volunteer hiking guides removed a bush that looked out of place, and then a pile of stones, and then three bodies, whose identities were confirmed by forensics about 3 a.m. Tuesday.
“It’s a huge area,” the senior security official said. “Not hard to hide people there. Every day the search area got narrowed down. It was a complex intelligence operation.” “It was kind of a puzzle,” said a senior Israeli security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do otherwise. “There was no one golden piece of information.”
Israeli ministers met for three hours Monday night but emerged without making decisions about possible retaliation. Haaretz, an Israeli daily, reported that the right-wing defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, proposed establishing a new settlement in memory of the slain teenagers, an idea vigorously opposed by centrist ministers who said it would threaten Israeli’s international legitimacy and divide Israelis at a moment of national unity. “It’s a huge area,” he added. “Not hard to hide people there. Every day, the search area got narrowed down.”
The Palestinian Authority leadership was scheduled to convene Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. as well to consider, among other things, the consequences for its recent reconciliation with Hamas, which Israel says is behind the attack. Almost from the start, Israel sought to pin the abduction on Hamas, whose reconciliation deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization it vigorously opposes. During the 18-day operation in the West Bank, according to a military statement, Israeli soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians — 335 of them affiliated with Hamas — searched 2,218 locations and confiscated about $350,000. They also killed six Palestinians who confronted them, the latest a wanted man who threw a grenade as they approached Tuesday morning in Jenin.
“The whole issue of who did this, we don’t know, really, even though Israel managed to punish everybody,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said in an interview. “Hamas says it has nothing to do with it. Hamas has never been self-effacing. Whenever they carried out an operation, they always declared it and took responsibility.” Hamas leaders have praised the kidnapping but not claimed credit for it.
“In every society you have people who commit crimes, you have people who do things outside the law,” Ms. Ashrawi added. “They may have taken a local initiative, even Israel is saying that.” “The whole issue of who did this, we don’t know, really, even though Israel managed to punish everybody,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the P.L.O. executive committee. “Hamas has never been self-effacing. Whenever they carried out an operation, they always declared it and took responsibility.”
Though Hamas famously held an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, alive for five years in the Gaza Strip before exchanging him for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in 2011, several security officials and analysts said that killing captured Israelis is the group’s more typical approach in the West Bank, where the Israeli military maintains an active presence and the Shin Bet security service has deep intelligence. The Israeli authorities acknowledge that the Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Aisha might have been a rogue cell operating without orders from the Hamas leadership. Mr. Qawasmeh, who five years ago told a fellow prisoner he had tried to kidnap an Israeli settler, is part of one of Hebron’s three largest families, a clan of 10,000 people associated with the militant Islamic Hamas movement but also known to buck its leadership, according to Mr. Eldar, the author. Inside the home of Mr. Aisha, a large Hamas poster mourns a brother who was killed by Israeli soldiers in 2005 as he tried to attack them.
In 2006, Eliyahu Oshri, 16, was kidnapped and killed by a Hamas cell while hitchhiking near the settlement of Ofra; his body was buried in a pit in Ramallah. A year earlier, Sasson Nuriel, 51, who worked in a factory in a West Bank settlement, was lured to a meeting by five Hamas members; his body was found in a garbage dump near Beitunia, outside Ramallah. “We are still trying to understand if they worked alone or had connections abroad or in Gaza,” the senior security official said of the suspects. “But the agenda of kidnapping is central to Hamas.”
An exception seared in Israeli memory was the case of Nachson Wachsman, a soldier who – like Naftali Fraenkel – also held United States citizenship. Kidnapped by Hamas militants as he hitched a ride in central Israel in 1994, Sergeant Wachsman was held for six days in a village outside Jerusalem as his captors bargained for an exchange of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but he was ultimately killed by his captors during an Israeli commando raid. In Hebron, where Israeli troops demolished the apartments of Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Aisha hours after the bodies were found, relatives and friends described the suspects as devoutly religious men with deep grudges against Israel. Mr. Qawasmeh has been arrested by Israel five times, the first at age 18, and Mr. Aisha twice.
“Past experience shows it is hard to keep abductees alive in Judea and Samaria, because we are there, the Army and the Shin Bet has freedom of access there,” the senior security official said, using the biblical names for the West Bank. “We are still investigating whether the intention was to keep them alive for bargaining or kill them and bargain over their bodies.” “He was against the national unity government, against the Oslo Accords, against Jews who occupied Palestine,” said Bassam Qawasmeh, 51, an uncle, referring to the Palestinian government sworn in last month based on the reconciliation with Hamas, and to the accords signed with Israel in the 1990s. “His goal, like every Palestinian, is to liberate all of Palestine.”
Israeli authorities on Thursday named two men from Hebron, Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 33, who have not been seen since the June 12 abduction, as the kidnappers. Both men have spent time in Israeli jails, and, the authorities said, Mr. Qawasmeh admitted to having been recruited by Hamas’ military wing. Mr. Aisha’s relatives denied he was a member of Hamas. “A person like him couldn’t be a kidnapper,” said a cousin, Tahseen Abu Aisha, 51, who was one of several who said the swimming accident left him thin and weak. Another cousin, Abdel Rahman, 24, said, “He is just a Muslim who prays in a mosque.”
Mr. Abu Aisha’s family owns a tin-roofed store selling iron rods in Azariya, a West Bank village near Jerusalem. A neighbor, who gave his name only as Ghaleb, said Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha “are very religious” and “spent long periods in prisons.”
“They aren’t troublemakers,” he said. “Both are calm people.”
Ribhi Abu Aisha, a relative, said Mr. Abu Aisha’s brothers are currently in Israeli prisons and his father was also imprisoned there. One brother, according to Israel’s security service, was killed in 2005 when he tried to hurl an explosive at Israeli soldiers.
Hamas leaders have praised the kidnapping but not claimed responsibility for it.
“We are still trying to understand if they worked alone or had connections abroad or in Gaza,” the senior security official said of the suspects. “There are assessments but nothing firm. But the agenda of kidnapping is central to Hamas.”
The Israeli authorities pushed their search on Tuesday for the two men as well as “other people in the second and third circles” with knowledge of the attack, according to Colonel Lerner, the army spokesman. In a late-night arrest raid in Jenin, Colonel Lerner said, Israeli troops shot and killed one of the three wanted men after he threw a grenade at them, bringing to six the number of Palestinians that soldiers have killed in the West Bank since the abduction.
“We’re putting all of the intelligence capabilities together, special forces and other units on the ground, and putting that into a plan of action to catch these people,” Colonel Lerner said. “We are confident that we will.”
He said the early-morning airstrikes in Gaza “has nothing to do with the killings” but was only a response to the increasing rocket attacks.
“We are sending a clear message that we have the destructive force, the intelligence, and the operational capability to deal out substantial blows in Gaza,” Colonel Lerner said. “We have absolutely no interest in an escalation with Gaza. But we need to be prepared. We’re preparing our intelligence capabilities, we’re preparing our force capabilities for the potential of an escalation there, but it’s not something we’re striving for, it’s not something we want to do.”