Israel-Palestine Clash Over Abducted Teenagers

An elderly Palestinian man sits near Israeli soldiers taing part in a search operation for three Israeli teenagers believed kidnapped by Palestinian militants. Israel is using the search to root out remaining Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank.

Israeli troops have clashed with the Palestinians in the course of an overnight operation in search of three Israeli teenagers who have been missing and who, according to Israel, have been kidnapped by Hamas.

Israeli army said on Thursday that Palestinians threw explosives and fired guns, leading the army to counterattack.

Meanwhile, Palestinian president Mahmud abbas severely criticized those behind the kidnapping of the teenagers. But as troops pressed their biggest arrest operation in years, imposing a tight lock-down on huge swathes of the West Bank, Abbas blasted those behind the teens’ disappearance, saying they were trying to “destroy” the Palestinian people.

Abbas on Wednesday defended the security co-operation between Israel and Palestine according to which Israeli forces work in tandem with the Palestinians in the search operations to trace the missing youths.

Mr. Abbas told the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that security co-ordination is a Palestinian national interest. “We don’t want to go back to chaos and destruction, as we did in the second [Palestinian] uprising,” he said. “I say it openly and frankly. We will not go back to an uprising that will destroy us.”

He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of exploiting the abductions “to oppress us and destroy everything and create chaos.”

However, Hamas strongly criticized the military co-operation. These comments are based on the Zionist narrative” and harmed the Palestinian interest, said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza. The PFLP added in a statement that “security co-ordination isn’t in anyone’s interest except the interest of the enemy and the settlers.”

Israel, meanwhile, said it is using the search for the missing teens to deliver a painful new blow to the remaining Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank. In addition to the arrests, Israeli troops raided 10 civil institutions allegedly linked to the group, said an army spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner.