Is search for missing Israeli settlers just a smokescreen?

Two weeks ago, three Israeli settler youths went missing while hitch-hiking in the occupied West Bank. Israel has officially blamed Hamas, Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement. But government officials have offered no evidence of this claim – and Hamas has denied it.

As a rule, Hamas makes a point of declaring responsibility for any involvement in armed activity against Israel. Aside from some dubious anonymous statements by unknown groups, there have been no claims of responsibility.

A military gag order on the Israeli press, published by Mondoweiss this week, means that concrete details about the affair are few and far between. The press is banned from talking a lot about it.

What is well known is that Israel has used the apparent kidnapping to its advantage. Reportedly utilising a plan drawn up well in advance, the Israeli army has for the past fortnight indulged in a brutal and systematic campaign of collective punishment against the Palestinian civilian population of the West Bank.

At least five Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli army thugs in the course of this campaign. Around 500 Palestinians have been arrested, many detained in “administrative detention” – interned with no prospect of charge or trial, or any solid release date.

Israeli military correspondent Amos Harel admitted last week that “only a small minority” are even suspected by the army of involvement of armed activity.

A secondary motivation seems to be a wiping-out of Hamas’s (already highly limited) political infrastructure in the West Bank. As such, many commentators reckon that the real target of the campaign is the new “unity government” signed between Fatah and Hamas over the future of the Palestinian Authority.

Adding fuel to the speculation about the real motivations behind Israel’s current assault on the West Bank were reports in the Israeli press this week suggesting that the three missing Israelis (two of whom are minors) may already be dead.

The gag order means that Israeli journalists are limited by law on what they can say exactly, but, as reported by Mondoweiss, the word is that the three may have been killed already.

The rumours state that the gag order “has prevented media from reporting on an emergency telephone call made by one of the abducted youths. A widespread rumour is that the sound of a shot can be heard on the call. Mondoweiss has talked with one Israeli source who claims to have listened to the recording and confirms gunshots can be heard. This rumour has fed speculation that Israeli authorities believe one or more of the boys is dead– speculation that has appeared in print.”

Is it hard to know accurate this is, but it does have the ring of truth about it.

If this disappearance is in fact caused by a Palestinian kidnapping, it is very different from the case of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza in 2006. He was held in safe conditions for years, until released in 2011 in a prisoner exchange with Israel. Now, many of those released Palestinian prisoners have been rearrested in Israel’s maximal dragnet.

Hamas was able to hold Shalit captive for so long because of its relatively secure power base in the Gaza Strip, which Israeli spies were unable to penetrate well enough to locate Shalit. The West Bank, dominated by racist Israeli settlers and the (to use Amnesty International’s phrase) “trigger happy” Israeli army, is an entirely different matter.

If it was Palestinians who took these three Israelis, then it is more than likely a small, politically-unaffiliated cell acting independently. It is highly unlikely that they can be held for long without Israel’s network of collaborators eventually finding something out – although to date they seem clueless.

Therefore, if it is true that the Israeli army already knows or suspects the three to be dead, the so-called “Brother’s Keeper” operation of collective punishment is nothing more than a smokescreen to once again put the boot in, further oppressing the Palestinian people.

In any case, as a spokesperson for Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer told me this week, Israel “will continue to profit from the operation … they will use this chance”.

<em>An associate editor with The Electronic Intifada, Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London.</em>

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