Memorial services held for murdered Israeli teenagers

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/israel-memorial-services-teenagers

Version 0 of 1.

Israelis mourned the deaths of three teenagers who were kidnapped two weeks ago, as the air force targeted dozens of locations in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man in the West Bank, where the teenagers disappeared on 12 June. Israel has accused the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza, of carrying out the abduction, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has said Hamas "will pay".

Hundreds of people participated in separate memorial services in the home towns of the three teenagers – Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frenkel, both 16 – before a joint funeral.

Laid on stretchers and wrapped in blue and white Israeli flags, the bodies were to be laid to rest together in the central Israeli town of Modiin.

"Recently, the people of Israel went through a great trauma," said Shirel Shaar, Gilad's younger sister. "We are living as if we are in a movie, whose ending is as bad as can be. I don't have a brother any more."

The finance minister, Yair Lapid, said: "We are burying a child today, a child who could have been the child of any one of us. Therefore he is indeed the child of each and every one of us."

The three were abducted while hitchhiking home from Jewish seminaries where they were studying near the West Bank city of Hebron. Their disappearances prompted the army to launch its largest ground operation in the West Bank in nearly a decade, dispatching thousands of troops to search for them and arresting nearly 400 Hamas operatives.

The bodies of the young men were found on Monday buried under a pile of rocks in a field north of Hebron.

The crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank has been accompanied by a spike in rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Overnight, Palestinian militants fired eight rockets into Israel, the army said. The Israeli air force carried out air strikes on 34 targets, including a Hamas compound, the military said. Palestinian officials said four people were wounded.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops shot and killed a 20-year-old Palestinian man during a raid in the northern town of Jenin. Israel said the man had thrown a grenade at the troops. His family said he had been carrying eggs home for a pre-dawn meal before the daylight fast for the Ramadan holiday.

Israeli authorities have released few details on the abduction or the search for the teenagers. On Tuesday, police released a recording of an emergency call made by one of the young men shortly after the abduction. "They kidnapped me," a voice, believed to be Shaar, can be heard saying.

Another male voice is then heard shouting: "Head down." Hotline workers initially dismissed the call as a hoax, delaying the rescue efforts for several hours, and several workers have been disciplined.

Israel has not yet decided how it will respond to the deaths of the youths. Netanyahu's security cabinet held a three-hour meeting late on Monday but was unable to agree on a response.

The Israeli daily Haaretz said the defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, had proposed building a new settlement in the West Bank in memory of the teens. Another cabinet minister, Naftali Bennett, proposed a large-scale military operation in Gaza and to begin using the death penalty against Palestinian militants.

Israel is also reportedly considering the deportation of senior Hamas members from the West Bank to Gaza, where they would face tight travel restrictions and would be separated from their families. The security cabinet was scheduled to meet later on Tuesday after the funerals to continue its debate.

In Jerusalem, several hundred rightwing Israeli youths, many of them Orthodox Jews, marched along a main road screaming for revenge. Police escorted the crowd, which briefly blocked Jerusalem's light rail service, as it made its way toward the city centre.

Thousands of Israelis have died in wars and militant attacks over the years, and Israel has grappled with the abduction of soldiers and civilians in the past. But the ages of the latest victims, and the fact that they were unarmed civilians, struck a raw nerve.

Israel has said two well-known Hamas operatives from Hebron are the primary suspects. The men, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh, have not been seen since the teenagers went missing, and military officials said the search for them would continue.

Israeli soldiers blew up a door of Abu Aisheh's home in Hebron early Tuesday, an Israeli military official said. AP photos show extensive damage to one side of the house.

After a two-week crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank, few major targets remain there. Hamas had already been weakened by seven years of pressure by Israel and the forces of the western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel could turn its attention towards the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where it has been battling a surge in rocket fire since the teens went missing. Israel also might consider stronger political action. The crisis has already heightened tensions between Israel and the new Palestinian government, which is headed by Abbas but backed by Hamas.

Hamas, an offshoot of the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, is deeply rooted in Palestinian society. The movement's political goal is an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine, including the territory that now makes up Israel.

Netanyahu has called on Abbas to end his alliance with Hamas, saying he cannot be serious about peace while cooperating with a group sworn to Israel's destruction. Israel and its western allies consider Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks, a terrorist group.

Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev called on Abbas "to break his alliance with these killers". He said: "This atrocity, this murder of innocent teenagers on their way home from school, is a clear example. It demonstrates that Hamas has not changed. It remains a vicious, vile terrorist organization that targets every Israeli civilian man, woman and as we've seen, children as well."