{"id":10146,"date":"2014-08-01T00:08:14","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T00:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=10146"},"modified":"2014-08-01T00:08:14","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T00:08:14","slug":"israel-admits-hamas-didnt-kidnap-the-3-israeli-teens-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/israel-admits-hamas-didnt-kidnap-the-3-israeli-teens-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel admits HAMAS didn\u2019t kidnap the 3 Israeli teens after all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #444444;\">When the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped in the West Bank, were found late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not mince words. \u201cHamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay,\u201d he said, initiating a campaign that eventually escalated into the present conflict in the region.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">But now, officials admit the kidnappings were not Hamas\u2019s handiwork after all.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">BuzzFeed reporter Sheera Frenkel was among the first to suggest that it was unlikely that Hamas was behind the deaths of Gilad Shaar,\u00a0Naftali Frenkel, and\u00a0Eyal Yifrach. Citing Palestinian sources and experts in the field, Frenkel reported that kidnapping three Israeli teens would be a\u00a0foolish move for Hamas. International experts told her it was likely the work of a local group, acting without concern for the\u00a0repercussions:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: #444444;\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: #aaaaaa;\">[Gershon Baskin]\u00a0pointed out that Hamas has earlier this month signed an agreement to form a unity government with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, bridging, for the first time in seven years, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: #aaaaaa;\">\u201cThey will lose their reconciliation agreement with Abbas if they do take responsibility for [the kidnappings],\u201d Baskin added.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">She was proven right:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>After Israel\u2019s top leadership exhaustively blamed Hamas for kidnap of 3 teens, they\u2019ve now admitted killers were acting as \u201clone cell.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sheeraf\/statuses\/492680742301106176\">July 25, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\u00a0 <\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>Order of events: 3 teens kidnapped-&gt;100s of Palestns in WB arrested-&gt;revenge attacks on Palestinians-&gt;violence along Gaza\/Israel border-&gt;war \u2014 Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sheeraf\/statuses\/492681292060708864\">July 25, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>Order of events: 3 teens kidnapped-&gt;100s of Palestns in WB arrested-&gt;revenge attacks on Palestinians-&gt;violence along Gaza\/Israel border-&gt;war<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sheeraf\/statuses\/492681292060708864\">July 25, 2014<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">Repeated inconsistencies in Israeli descriptions of the situation have sparked debate over whether Israel wanted to provoke Hamas into a confrontation. Israeli intelligence is also said to have known that the boys were dead shortly after they disappeared, but to have maintained public optimism about their safe return to\u00a0beef up support from the Jewish diaspora. Writing for Al Jazeera, Musa al-Gharbi argued that Israel was\u00a0deliberately provoking Hamas:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: #444444;\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: #aaaaaa;\">All the illegal and immoral actions related to Operation Brother\u2019s Keeper were justified under the premise of finding and saving the missing teens whom the Israeli government knew to be dead \u2014 cynically exploiting the tragedy to whip up public outcry in order to provoke and then confront Hamas. This pattern of deception continues under the ongoing military offensive in Gaza. For example, last week in collaboration with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Abbas, in its efforts to alienate Hamas, Israel announced a\u00a0bad-faith cease-fire proposal, which Hamas was not consulted on and never agreed to but whose violation supposedly justified Israel\u2019s expansion and intensification of the military campaign into Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">Despite continued negotiations, the violence shows no signs of letting up, and after Thursday night\u2019s\u00a0massive protests in the West Bank, there is still no ceasefire agreement. On Friday, it became clear that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry\u2019s\u00a0attempts to broker a seven-day truce\u00a0were rejected by Israeli officials. Instead, Israel will apparently\u00a0widen its ground operation in the Gaza Strip, despite international outcry about the civilian death toll. According to unnamed officials, the proposed truce was too generous to Hamas\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">Hamas, meanwhile, still hasn\u2019t\u00a0weighed in on the agreement, whose details are being kept secret, but continued to launch rockets into Israel. International peace talks are set to resume in France this weekend, and we\u2019re keeping our fingers crossed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/topinfopost.com\/2014\/07\/27\/israel-admits-hamas-didnt-kidnap-the-3-israeli-teens-after-all\">topinfopost<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped in the West Bank, were found late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not mince words. \u201cHamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay,\u201d he said, initiating a campaign that eventually escalated into the present conflict in the region. But now, officials admit the kidnappings were &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1204,331,136,1139,1141,768,374,207,70,1140,163],"class_list":["post-10146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-lectures","tag-estine","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-jdl","tag-jews","tag-media","tag-muslims","tag-peace","tag-protest","tag-protesting","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10146"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10149,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10146\/revisions\/10149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}