As thousands mourn murdered teenagersIsraeli government prepares onslaught
against Palestinian peopleBy James Cogan
2 July 2014
Tens of thousands of people across Israel and internationally assembled
yesterday to mourn the three teenagers whose bodies were discovered on
Monday in a shallow grave not far from where they disappeared on June 12.
Eyal Yifrah, 19, and Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaer, both 16, were
kidnapped and murdered as they hitchhiked back from a religious school in
Kfar Etzion, one of the illegal Israeli settlements in the Gush Etzion
region of the Palestinian West Bank territory.
The Israeli regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has seized on the
tragic death of the young men as the pretext for escalating its aggression
against the Palestinian people and strengthening Israel’s grip on the
occupied territories. The Israeli government has declared that the Islamist
party Hamas is responsible for the murders, without providing any evidence
to substantiate the charge, which is denied by Hamas.
Early Tuesday, the West Bank homes of two Hamas members accused of
involvement in the kidnapping were blown up by Israeli troops—the first
such punitive demolitions since 2005. In Gaza, Palestinian sources said
Israeli jets had carried out many as 40 air strikes since the bodies were
found.
On Tuesday, Israeli police released extracts of an emergency call recorded
on the day the teenagers disappeared, in which one, believed to be Gilad
Shaer, stated, “I was kidnapped.” The *New York Times* reported that
another voice, speaking in Hebrew, shouted “head down” and then, in Arabic,
demanded the phone. According to the *Times*, Israeli journalists who have
heard more of the call claim that a gunshot could be heard. Medical
examinations have ascertained that the three youth were killed not long
after they were abducted.
In Israel, the families held separate services in their home towns before
coming together to conduct a joint burial of the three youth at the Modi’in
Cemetery.
Among the thousands who attended the funerals was Netanyahu, who delivered
a eulogy to the slain teenagers. Within hours, he was fronting the media to
issue blood-curdling threats of vengeance against Hamas.
Even the US State Department, which rarely questions any action or
statement of the Zionist regime, refused yesterday to endorse the
accusation against Hamas. Deputy spokesperson Marie Harf stated: “Hamas may
have been involved. I am not at this point saying they were responsible.”
Netanyahu has had no such hesitations. Flanked by his defense minister,
Moshe Ya’alon, and military head, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, he told a
press conference a few hours after the funerals: “Hamas is responsible.
Hamas is paying and Hamas will continue to pay.” A meeting of the Israeli
security cabinet took place on Tuesday night, at which the nature of the
Netanyahu government’s response to the murders was being discussed.
Two members of Hamas who live in the town of Hebron, not far from where the
teenagers were abducted, have been named as the key suspects in their
murder. From the day the youth went missing, Netanyahu’s government has
exploited its unsubstantiated accusations against the entire Hamas
organisation to unleash massive violence in the West Bank.
Thousands of homes have been raided and up to 600 alleged Hamas members or
supporters dragged off and imprisoned. At least six people have been killed
and 120 wounded.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which is controlled by Hamas’s
rival, Fatah, and headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, has collaborated with
Israeli forces while issuing token condemnations of the scale of the
repression.
Netanyanu’s immediate aim has been to destroy any prospect of Hamas and
Fatah implementing the agreement they reached in April to form a “national
unity” government and establish a common administration over both the West
Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The national unity regime is
viewed by the Palestinian bourgeois factions as crucial in getting the
necessary international support for the recognition of the Palestinian
Authority as a nation-state, with a seat in the United Nations.
The Fatah-Hamas agreement followed talks in March between US President
Barack Obama and Abbas, during which Obama heaped praise upon the
Palestinian Authority for the “strong institutions” that had been built in
the West Bank “in preparation for a day in which the Palestinians have
their own state.” The so-called Palestinian state formally endorsed by
Washington would, were it ever to come into existence, be little more than
a holding pen for the Palestinian people, with the Israeli military
remaining in control of the borders and Palestinian lands divided and cut
off from one another by Israeli-controlled roads and barriers.
Netanyahu’s Likud party, along with much of the Israeli political
establishment, formally accepts a so-called “two-state solution,” but is
virulently opposed to losing control over the territories that Israel
seized and occupied in the 1967 war.
In April, an alarmed Netanyahu seized upon the beginning of talks between
Fatah and Hamas to reject any further negotiations with the Palestinian
Authority, on the grounds that Hamas was a “terrorist organisation.” The
Obama administration, however, signalled that it was prepared to work with
the unity government.
The Israeli ruling elite now sees an opportunity to reverse what it feared
were moves in Washington toward recognising Palestine. The US and other
major powers are focussed on the tensions with Russia over Ukraine and the
chaos wracking the Middle East, with the civil wars in Syria and Iraq
threatening to draw the neighbouring Arab states and Iran into a regional
war.
The disappearance of the three teenagers this month, and now the
confirmation that they were murdered, is being used to whip up nationalist
and anti-Arab sentiment in Israel and justify yet another barbaric war
against the Palestinian people.
There are indications that Netanyahu is preparing a full-scale military
onslaught into the Palestinian territories. Last night, following the
security cabinet meeting, he outlined his government’s three “objectives”
to the media: to find the killers and kidnappers of the youth; to weaken
Hamas’s infrastructure and manpower in the West Bank; and to conduct
operations against it in Gaza.
In operations last night, a 19-year-old Palestinian, Yousouf Ibrahim, was
shot dead by Israeli troops during raids in the Jenin refugee camp, in the
north of the West Bank. Israeli authorities stated he had thrown a grenade.
Witnesses cited by Al Jazeera denied the allegation, accusing Israeli
forces of gunning him down as he and a friend were walking home. He was
carrying a box of eggs.
Many more Palestinians and Israelis, young and old, may well lose their
lives in the coming days and weeks. Among the measures Netanyahu is
reportedly contemplating are wholesale targeted assassinations, the first
deployment of Israeli troops into Gaza since early 2009, demands that Abbas
repudiate the unity agreement with Hamas, and the announcement of the
permanent military occupation of the West Bank.
In a chilling comment to journalists as the cabinet session was underway,
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi remarked: “I don’t know how many
leaders of Hamas will remain alive after tonight.” Foreign Minister Avigdor
Liberman issued a statement calling for an operation in the West Bank and
Gaza on the scale of the 2002 “Defensive Shield” onslaught, during which
tens of thousands of Israeli troops rampaged through the occupied
territories, destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority,
killing close to 500 people, wounding over 1,400, and detaining at least
7,000.
The most extreme Zionist tendencies in Israel are not waiting for the
government to decide on a course of action. A mob rioted in Jerusalem
yesterday, attempting to attack Arabs and their property. As they marched,
they chanted “Revenge” and “Kahane was right.” Meir Kahane, a right-wing
demagogue who was assassinated in 1990, advocated annexing the occupied
territories and ethnic cleansing to drive all Arabs out of what he called
“Greater Israel.”
The *Times of Israel* reported that in the Gush Etzion region a group of
Zionist settlers exploited the deaths to declare the establishment of yet
another illegal Israeli settlement, cynically naming it Givat Oz
Ga-on—which in Hebrew characters forms an acronym of Gilad, Eyal and
Naftali.
Political responsibility for the tragic death of the teenagers lies first
and foremost with Zionism and its representatives such as Netanyahu, as
well as US imperialism, which supplies Israel with billions worth of
military equipment. The death, dislocation and oppression the Zionist state
has inflicted and continues to inflict upon the Palestinian people is the
root cause of the sectarian and ethnic hatreds that lie behind the murder
of three innocent youth.
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