By Abdullah H. Erakat and Linda Gradstein, The Media Line
As thousands of Israeli soldiers comb every inch of the West Bank in an intense search for three kidnapped Israeli teenagers, Palestinian security forces say they are doing everything they can to help find the boys. Despite anger in the Palestinian street over Israel’s invasive presence and the inconvenience of house-to-house searches, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he will continue to maintain the security coordination with Israel, which he has called a “Palestinian national interest.”
“Our intelligence is working closely with their intelligence,” a Palestinian security source with detailed information about how the cooperation works, but who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Media Line. “The two sides are working as one to find out where they [the Israeli teenagers] are, because we don’t know either.”
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu insists that the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, is behind the kidnapping, and says Israel will eventually release proof. Israel has focused its efforts on Hamas members in the West Bank, arresting 380 Palestinians associated with the group, including several parliamentarians.
The Israeli crackdown comes after Hamas joined a unity government with Abbas’s Fatah movement earlier this month, a move meant to foster Palestinian reconciliation and pave the way for elections, but which is vehemently opposed by Israel.
Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner confirmed that Israeli-Palestinian security coordination, which was established in the 1993 Oslo Accords, is continuing.
“We’re both on the same page. Over the last years there has been an increase in the level of coordination between the IDF and the Palestinian security apparatus out of a mutual understanding that terrorism is bad for both of us,” Lerner said. “In this current operation, they understand that this has the potential of causing the security situation to deteriorate, which would be bad for all of us.”
So far, there have been sporadic clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in the West Bank, with six Palestinians having been killed. More than 2,000 locations that include homes, offices, and university campuses have been searched.
Major General Adnan Al-Damiri, spokesperson for the Palestinian security forces, says that the Palestinians “do not have any information of where [the abductees] were taken from, or who took them.”
“The Israelis are imposing collective punishment on the Palestinian people,” Al-Damiri told The Media Line. “They have tightened their choke hold on the Palestinians, closing checkpoints, creating chaos, and striking fear in the hearts of Palestinian men, women and children as if they are in a battle or a war.”
The army has placed the West Bank city of Hebron under closure, meaning that Palestinians who work outside the city have not been able to reach their jobs since the kidnapping two weeks ago. Damiri charged the Israeli soldiers with mistreating the Palestinian population.
“Someone searching for missing teenagers does not look in refrigerators, or in safes in people’s homes,” he said. “We have received many complaints from Palestinians that money has been stolen after the Israeli army raided homes.”
Army spokesman Peter Lerner says the army has confiscated more than $220,000 of what he described as Hamas operational funds, but he was not aware of any army thefts of money from private safes.
“This is money that was intended to allow Hamas to operate,” he said.
The teens were kidnapped from Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank that is under sole Israeli security and administrative control as established by the Oslo Accords. Abbas said that Israel did not even inform the Palestinian security services until 12 hours after the kidnapping. The search has focused on Hebron, most of which is in Area A, where the Palestinian Authority is supposed to exercise full security and administrative control. The Palestinian security source said Israel’s intelligence in Area A is not as good as in other areas of the West Bank. Israel is also searching rural areas north of Hebron that are in Area B, meaning they are under Israeli security control and Palestinian administrative control.
“Every [Palestinian] unit has an [Israeli] counterpart,” he said. “If there are areas that the Israelis can’t get into, they ask the Palestinians to go in there.”
As the days pass, the security cooperation is growing increasingly unpopular with the Palestinian public.
“Since the beginning of the Hebron operation, the Palestinian Authority has been acting as a representative of the Israeli occupation — cooperating with them at a time that they are waging acts of war against the Palestinian people,” charged Hani Al-Masri, an analyst and newspaper columnist. “People feel that Abbas should not sustain security cooperation with Israel while it is waging war on the Palestinian people.”
The searches are continuing as the Palestinian holy month of Ramadan approaches. Israeli officials are concerned that the month of prayer and fasting could lead to more clashes with Palestinians. At the moment, searches and arrests seem to be winding down, but as time passes, it also begins to appear more likely that the three teenagers are no longer alive.
“As time goes by, clearly we are concerned for their wellbeing,” IDF spokesman Lerner said. “But we are working under the assumption that they are still alive and they’re hidden somewhere dark and dingy — the basement of some house or some cave.”
He also said that Israel will find them with or without the help of the Palestinian Authority.
The cooperation is ongoing and has built a certain level of trust,” Lerner said. But we, as the Israeli army, don’t depend on them. We are operating in parallel and trying to bring back the boys independently. If the Palestinian security apparatus can contribute to that, it would be a good thing. If not, we will do it independently.”