As of this writing, Monday,
June 23, The IDF and Israeli security services are still searching for the
three teenagers that were kidnapped a week ago from a junction near their
school in the West Bank.
Here’s what we know at this time.
·
Thursday, June 12, 10:00pm: Gilad Shaaer, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, left
their school on their way to their homes for the weekend. They probably walked
the short distance to the nearest main road.
·
A few minutes later they arrived at nearby Gush Etzion Junction, on the
main road between Jerusalem and Hebron, where the met up with Eyal Yifrach, 19.
·
10:15pm - The three were seen together at the junction.
·
There has been no sign of them since.
·
It is believed that they hitched a ride together following the cardinal
rules of hitchhiking in the West Bank:
o
Only a car with Israeli license plates
o
Speak to the driver to confirm that he/she is Israeli
o
Never enter a car if there is anyone, male or female, in the back seat.
o
Never hitchhike alone.
·
At 10:25pm a call came in to the emergency police line in which a voice
whispered “we’ve been kidnapped”.
·
A young soldier, serving her national service with the police, took the
call and asked her commanding officer to listen to it. He thought it was a prank and told her to
ignore it. Had he followed protocol, he would, with the press of one button,
activated a system called Compass. Compass identifies the owner of a telephone,
and gives police access to a caller's list of contacts, enabling them to
contact family or friends to determine if the emergency is legitimate.
·
A police spokesman claimed that those who received the call didn't
understand what was whispered over the line. The officer also stressed however,
that this was no excuse for Compass not being activated.
·
"At least they could have checked with the family of the owner of
the phone if everything was ok," said the officer.
·
At 3:00am the father of one of the boys called the police to report him
missing.
·
Around the same time a call came in about a car on fire in Hebron
·
The police now connected the dots and informed the IDF and GSS (Shin
Bet).
·
Based on intelligence data, the Israelis zeroed in on elements in Hamas
in the Hebron area that opposed the agreement with Fatah on a unified
government.
·
Over 2,000 IDF combat soldiers and elite police officers started
combing the city of Hebron and its surrounding hills. A difficult mission
considering that there are thousands of active and abandoned wells in the area,
as well as hundreds of natural and man-made caves and tunnels.
·
Searching house to house with special equipment, the IDF discovered a
network of previously unknown tunnels that led from various houses to large
underground spaces.
·
They also arrested over 250 active members of Hamas, including several
that had been released in exchange for Gilad Shalit.
·
A top Israeli security official said that Saleh al-Arouri, the founder
of Hamas’s armed wing in the West Bank, was a key figure behind the abductions.
Earlier this year Israeli military
officials attributed an uptick in Hamas-driven violence in the West Bank to
Arouri, who is based in Turkey and has in recent years reportedly taken “sole
control” of efforts to rebuild Hamas’s terror infrastructure in the West Bank.
As of this writing, despite extensive
searches of the West Bank by massive numbers of IDF troops and police, as well
as intensive intelligence work, there has been no sign of the teenagers or
their captors.
Israel has three clear objectives in
“Operation Brother’s Keeper”:
1. Bring the three Israeli teenagers
home, hopefully alive and well.
2. Systematically destroy Hamas’s
political and terrorism infrastructure in the West Bank.
3. Force Abu Mazen to cancel the
unification agreement with Hamas and disband the “unity government”.
Gaza: In the meantime, in order to
possibly ease the Israeli pressure on their leaders in the West Bank, over the
past two weeks Hamas has allowed terrorist groups in Gaza to resume firing
rockets and mortars into Israel. Israel
has reacted each time with air strikes, directly at the launchers.
However, knowledgeable sources have claimed
in the past few days that a large-scale air and ground assault on all terrorist
assets in the Gaza strip, especially those of Hamas, is almost inevitable for three
reasons:
1. The current round of rocket and
mortar attacks on Israel
2. Because of the loss of its
infrastructure in the West Bank and deteriorating popularity in Gaza, Hamas
will launch heavy rocket fire to compel Israel to transfer forces from the West
Bank for a short (even if highly destructive) operation in Gaza. Hamas believes
that this round will end like the previous two: with an Egyptian brokered,
American and EU backed cease-fire that will strengthen Hamas and financially
benefit the Gaza residents.
3. To reestablish and strengthen
Israel’s deterrence.
To
summarize: At this moment we are looking at a highly probable third Gaza war,
caused by the current major Israeli military operations to dislodge Hamas in
the West Bank, which was triggered by the kidnapping of three Israeli teens.
No comments:
Post a Comment