The Endless War

"In their memories, we must ensure that this tragic end be turned into an opportunity to create a better and safer Israel. Israelis have the willingness and the fortitude necessary to endure the hardships of a long-lasting operation aimed at eradicating Hamas. We will not stop until Hamas is completely defeated."
Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon

"We want peace to be created in this part of the world so no mother or no family will be bereaved for the loss of their beloved ones, Palestinian or Israeli."
Abdallah Abdallah, Palestinian Authority adviser

"Netanyahu should know that threats don't scare Hamas, and if he wages a war on Gaza, the gates of hell will open on him."
Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri

At the hitchhiking spot in the West Bank where teenagers Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar were abducted, Israelis light memorial candles after the discovery of their bodies, June 30, 2014. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)

One of the civilian volunteers working alongside the IDF in searching for the possible whereabouts of Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16 and Naftali Fraenkel, 16 who disappeared on June 12 while hitchhiking homeward from their Jewish seminary studies in the West Bank thought something looked out of place in the field close to the Palestinian city where they had disappeared, near Hebron.

"[He] saw something suspicious on the ground, plants that looked out of place, moved them and moved some rocks and then found the bodies. We realized it was them and we called the army", reported Binyamin Proper, one of the civilian search party participants.

The two men whom Israel identified as the chief suspects, two well-known Hamas operatives, disappeared soon after the three teens had been abducted. The teens had taken up the offer of a drive from someone driving a white SUV. One of the teens had used his cellphone to alert his family that he was being taken away; soon afterward gunshots were heard. An autopsy of the three young men seemed to indicate that they had put up a struggle....

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the kidnappings publicly and spoke compassionately of the fate of young people taken into violent situations. Palestinian security forces were instructed to coordinate search efforts with Israel. But though Hamas is most certainly implicated in the atrocity beyond merely having congratulated the abductors for a job well done, there is no indication that the unity Palestinian government recently formed will be dissolved.

In Israel ferocious debate is taking place on a whole range of national issues relating to the country's relationship with the Palestinians, including foremost the wisdom of exchanging Palestinian prisoners for the security and homecoming of kidnapped Israelis. When Hamas took soldier Gilad Shalit captive in 2006, he was redeemed at the cost of one thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his freedom.

Once back in circulation many of those released prisoners have returned to the anti-Israel activities that brought them to prison to begin with. Some fifty of the previously arrested-and-released were subsequently rearrested in the wide-ranging desperation of the military operation to find the three teens. Their arrest had a double purpose; the secondary one was to diminish the presence of Hamas in the West Bank, where hundreds of their operatives were arrested during the operation.

An explosion at the Hebron home of Amer Abu Aisha, who is suspected in the murder of three Israeli teenagers found dead yesterday. Eisheh's home and the home of another suspected kidnapper were destroyed yesterday night by Israeli force  

HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images