Punishing a whole population is not the answer

On Thursday 12 June, three Israeli teenagers disappeared from a hitchhiking post in a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem. It has been assumed that Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Frankel, 16, and Gil-ad Shaar, 16, were kidnapped, although no group has come forward to make demands or claim responsibility. The Israeli government has pointed the finger at Hamas, which recently entered a Palestinian unity government with rival faction Fatah. Israel has said it holds the Palestinian Authority responsible for the safety of the boys.

In the week that has passed since the boys disappeared, 330 people have been arrested from 200 towns, refugee camps, and cities in the West Bank. Reuters reports that 240 of those arrested are members of Hamas – including former ministers and university professors. Among the detained is Aziz Dweick, a resident of Hebron and the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, and nine other members of the parliament. Around 1,150 sites have been searched, according to the Israeli military. Two people have been killed during the raids, including Mohammed Dudin, a 15-year-old boy.

The human face of conflict is always tragic. The distress felt by the families and friends of the three missing teenagers is a natural human reaction; young civilian lives caught in the crossfire of an intractable conflict. But there are serious questions to be asked about the Israeli government’s response. Of course, states should take steps to find and recover citizens who have gone missing, and to prosecute those responsible – but this response should remain within the rule of law. Indiscriminately raiding houses, arresting people without intelligence to suggest they are culpable, and killing people in the course of the investigation clearly falls short of these principles.

“We, as Palestinians, of course we are suffering collective punishment,” Daoud Zatari, the mayor of Hebron, said this week. “If it will last long it will have devastating and severe consequences on the people, not only from the economic side. The life is miserable now. They are feeling they are living in a surrounded zone, as if we are all in a big jail.”

While disproportionate responses from Israel are nothing new, this latest incident cannot be separated from the current political context. Tensions between Israel and Palestine are currently particularly heightened because of the collapse of US-brokered peace talks earlier in the year. In the aftermath of the breakdown of talks, Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation agreement, which led to the formation of a unity government this month – the end of seven years of hostility between the two factions. Israel is anxious about this; Hamas does not recognise its existence and is a militant organisation engaged in violent struggle.

The furore over the missing teenagers has highlighted tension between the two Palestinian groups. “We are coordinating with Israel in order to return these youths, because they are human beings and we want to protect the lives of human beings,” Mahmous Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority said. Hamas disapproves of Abbas’s cooperation with Israel, and condemned the comments.

In the West Bank, conspiracy theories abound, with some suggesting the whole incident has been staged to undermine unity or to oust Hamas. While that seems unlikely, there is no doubt that both the incident and the response are closely tied to the wider political context. Some reports suggest that tensions in the West Bank are running higher than they have since the Second Intifada.

It is always a tragedy when civilians are caught up in conflict. That is just as true of the three Israeli teenagers as it is of the hundreds of Palestinians who have been arrested, or the two who have needlessly lost their lives in the course of an excessively violent and punitive investigation. Punishing a whole population is not the answer for the crimes of a few.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.