JERUSALEM (EJP)—Israel on Tuesday mourned the three Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were found Monday, as they were to be buried.
At a large funeral, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver the eulogy, his office announced. President Shimon Peres will attend as well.
Processions for each of the three boys — Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gilad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frankel, a 16-year-old dual U.S.-Israeli citizen — will meet up at Modi’in cemetery, the Israeli media reported. Separate memorial ceremonies took place for each of the three teens at their respective homes in Talmon, Elad and near Nof Ayalon earlier on Tuesday.
Their killings, which Israel blames on Hamas, galvanized the nation and drew condemnations across the globe.
Overnight, Israel stepped up airstrikes on Gaza. The military said it struck 34 terror infrastructure targets after 18 rockets had been fired into Israel since Sunday evening.
“Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created. Neither has vengeance for the blood of three pure youths who were on their way home to their parents who will not see them anymore,” Netanyahu told his cabinet. “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay. May the memories of the three boys be blessed.”
“They were abducted and murdered in cold blood by human animals,” he said. He told the boys’ families: “The entire nation weeps with you.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has named two suspects, Marwan Kawasme and Omar Abu Aysha, who are the “Hamas terrorists who kidnapped” the boys. Their Hebron homes were destroyed overnight.
The three Israeli teenagers disappeared 19 days ago while trying to hitchhike home from school in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. On Monday, volunteers from an Israeli settlement discovered their bodies in an open field not far from Hebron, a southern West Bank city.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, suggested Monday that the Palestinian Authority also bore some responsibility for what happened.
“It’s clear that the terrorists came from areas under Palestinian Authority control and returned to territories under Palestinian Authority control,” he said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called for an operation to eradicate the threat of rocket attacks in Gaza, saying another Operation Defensive Shield is necessary, this time in Gaza.
Operation Defensive Shield was a military operation that ook place in 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada, as part of the IDF’s efforts to decrease terrorist attacks originating in the West Bank.
Israel “mustn’t bury its head in the hand,” Lieberman said, drawing a link between the murder of three Israeli students in the West Bank and the upsurge in rocket attacks on southern Israel.
The cause of both, he says, was Hamas’s efforts to “take over the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank following the establishment of a Palestinian unity government.”
“Hamas was and remains a terrorist organization,” says Liberman, “and its murderous activities are at the heart of all its operations. Therefore, it must be prevented from taking over the area through a thorough and determined military operation, similar to Operation Defensive Shield over a decade ago, by damaging its infrastructure, capabilities and executive arm.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has condemned the teens’ abduction, called an emergency meeting of his own. The Palestinian leadership is expected to meet Tuesday to discuss the developments.
The killings of the three boys “would amount to a war crime if committed by an armed group,” Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
“Abducting and killing civilians is always an unjustifiable crime,” the group’s Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson said in a statement. “It’s appalling that the victims in this case included children.”