With bodies of kidnapped teens found, Israel is now waging war against Hamas

It was clear to the Shin Bet from the very beginning of its search for the three abducted teenagers and their kidnappers in the West Bank that there was little chance of finding the boys alive.

The investigation began seven hours after the boys were kidnapped, due to the failure of the police to operate accordingly, to respond to one of the boys' desperate plea for help or to track the call in the hours that followed.

The Shin Bet relied on two means of intelligence and two spheres of search over the last 19 days: They employed human intelligence (Shin Bet case officers, sources in the field, using agents and collaborators, and forensic evidence) and signet (wiretapping and analysis of data). Based on the lack of forensics aside from the burnt car abandoned by the kidnappers, and to the fact that there were no claims of responsibility from any individual or organization, the Shin Bet did not have even the slightest evidence to assess that the three were still alive.

Based on that assessment, the Shin Bet opened two spheres of search: one to locate the kidnappers and the other to locate the teens – or their bodies.

Security forces raided Hebron, near the site of the kidnapping and the believed home base of the kidnappers. The Shin Bet had listed Marwan Kwasame and Amar Abu Aysha as prime suspects within three days of the kidnapping, after learning that the two Hamas militants had disappeared just hours before the incident. Both have a history of militancy in the Hebron area, and both have been arrested in Israel in the past.

The Israeli forces turned homes upside down by the dozen, arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives and suspects, and searched in the river valleys and farms surrounding the area for some evidence of eithers' whereabouts.

The Shin Bet managed to narrow down the huge swath of land near Hebron to the exact spot where they found the boys' bodies at about 6 P.M. on Monday evening, but they still have not managed to track down the kidnappers. The manhunt is still underway, and the Shin Bet is certain it will manage to locate them. It believes that the kidnappers have not managed to escape the West Bank or even find refuge in the northern part of the territory, and estimates that they are still hiding in the Hebron area.

Two main questions, aside from the kidnappers' location, remain. The first is whether the kidnappers intended all along to abduct and kill, or whether they panicked in their attempt to bargain their hostages for a prisoner release and shot their victims in the head after one of the boys made a desperate call to the police hotline and whispered, "They kidnapped me."

As neither Kwasame nor Abu Aysha hold particularly high ranks in the Hamas, the second question is whether they carried out the kidnapping on their own accord, believing it to be their obligations as members of the Islamist organization, or if they were ordered to do so from the higher ranks.

The riddle can only be solved once the kidnappers have been found and the other Hamas operatives detained in the last week and a half of raids have been interrogated. The search for the kidnappers will continue and so will the overnight raids in Hebron.


Infographic created by Haaretz

Meanwhile, a fierce second front has erupted on the Gaza border. Some 70 rockets have been fired at the Gaza border communities since Operation Brother's Keeper began, the most severe of which struck a factory in the southern city of Sderot and ignited a massive fire.

The rocket attacks have been carried out mostly by splinter militant groups like an offshoot of the Palestinian Resistance Committees, and not by Hamas, exploiting Israel's second volatile front as its security and intelligence forces are focused on the West Bank.

Regardless of who is launching the rockets, Israel holds Hamas responsible for every attack, whether launched by those loyal to the ruling movement or rebel factions who refuse its authority.

The Israel Defense Forces has responded with harsh strikes on the coastal territory, killing more than half a dozen militants on their way to carry out a rocket attack. As the situation around the Gaza Strip continues, the IDF is intensifying its operation, with a focus on targeted assassinations in addition to pinpointed hits on the lower-level militants firing the rockets.

Israel's security cabinet convened late Monday after the bodies were found to determine further course of action, a meeting that was followed immediately by a new round of air strikes on Gaza. Former deputy minister of strategic affairs, Tzachi Hanegbi, has said it is not clear how many of Hamas' leaders will remain alive following the IDF strikes.

The trained eyes of Israel's defense establishment are on alert to threats from both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and to the developments in its neighbors to the north, Iraq and Syria. After a near two-year period of calm, escalation has resumed. Israel has made it clear that it will not tolerate any attacks on its territory or its citizens, and will use its mighty hand to stop them.

Israel's political goal, from the beginning of the operation, was to convince Mahmoud Abbas to annul the Palestinian Authority's partnership with its former rival Hamas. With the recent barrage of rockets from Gaza, Israel is using the opportunity to take the matter into its own hand and strike Hamas in its heartland. The Palestinian factions acting on their own and firing rockets will only encourage a harsher Israeli response.

Hezbollah, Al-Qaida or lone wolf? Brussels shooting bears marks of Islamist world war's new face

When a professional gunman, wearing a baseball cap and carrying a simple sports bag, walked into the Brussels Jewish Museum last Saturday and opened fire on four innocent victims, killing three and leaving the fourth with critical brain injuries, the media in both Israel and Belgium were quick to posit that this was the work of a well-oiled Islamist machine targeting members of the Israeli intelligence community.

The fact that Emanuel and Mira Riva, who were killed in the shootout, were both employees of Israeli government factions under the auspices of the Prime Minister's Office, led to early and uncorroborated assumptions that the two – or at least the wife - were Mossad operatives and deliberate targets of the shooter, tied to either Hezbollah or Al-Qaida.

While the calculated manner of the shooting, as well as the choice of a Jewish institution, indeed point to the hand of a trained Islamist terrorist, it is highly doubtful that the Rivas were specifically targeted as representatives of the Israeli intelligence community.

It is true that Hezbollah has long targeted Israeli and Jewish targets the world over, a threat it intensified in the wake of its senior commander Imad Mughniyeh's assassination in 2009, with a particular focus on Israelis part and parcel to the office of those perpetuators – the Mossad, or better known in covert Israeli speak, the Prime Minister's Office.

But it is also true that neither of the Rivas was a Mossad operative: both were accountants, he a former employee of the Nativ immigration agency that aided Russian Jewish emigres, and she a clerk. Neither were prime targets for the organization, as an Israeli officer would have been.

While the possibility remains that the attack was orchestrated by affiliates of Hezbollah or Al-Qaida, there is little to indicate that it was ordered by the higher ranks of either.

The evidence collected so far, including the lack of organizational support at the scene of the crime and the failure to pinpoint a network of other suspects, indicate that the shooting was carried out by either a local cell of the Islamic Jihad or by a lone gunman.

The Brussels shooter was a professional; that is a fact that cannot be disputed. With little forensic evidence to narrow down the identity of the gunman, investigators are relying on security footage from the museum, which captured him walking calmly into the tourist attraction, pulling out an AK-47 Kalashnikov rifle, shooting at his targets, and in just as measured a walk with which he entered, leaving the premises after completing the deed. He even remembered to zip his bag. Despite earlier reports, the gunman was alone at the scene of the shooting, and no getaway car awaited him, nor is there evidence that he received on-spot logistical support.

A viable suspect has been arrested, a 29-year-old Frenchmen of Algerian descent, named Mehdi Nemmouche. He was caught by authorities at a bus station in Marseille, en route from Amsterdam with a stop in Brussels. In his bag, which French police say was searched as part of a routine drug inspection, was an AK-47 Kalshnikov rifle, a revolver and ammunition, a GoPro camera said to be worn by the Brussels shooter and the baseball cap and clothing seen in CCTV on the body of the gunman during the attack.

A French police source called Nemmouche, who is still in custody and maintained the right to silence in the first 24 hours of his arrest, "an expert gunman and a crap fugitive." Shortly after Nemmouche's arrest, authorities released a video in which a voice, apparently belonging to the Frenchman, describes the shooting as an "attack against the Jews."

Nemmouche was not stopped by chance. He was already circulating in the French database as a national who had traveled to Syria to train and fight with jihadis there. His inspiration for Islamist warfare was apparently gleaned during his near year-long stay in a French prison, where he was incarcerated for robbing a convenience store.

The Brussels shooting bears remarkable similarities to the attack in Toulouse in 2012, when gunman Mohamed Mera, affiliated with Jihad but acting alone, shot and killed four people outside a Jewish school.

Like Mera, the Brussels gunman wore a personal miniature camera on his chest. And like Mera, his was clearly the work of an Islamist targeting Jews, though not specifically Israelis, and not necessarily ordered by the higher ranks of a global Jihad movement.

Just hours after the attack in Brussels, two Jewish men were assaulted leaving a synagogue in Paris and left in serious condition, harping back to the grotesque murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old French Jew tortured, burned and dismembered by a "lone" group in 2007.

If the Brussels attack was indeed carried out without instruction by the greatest terrorist groups of our time, the act of a "lone" wolf must not be dismissed as less threatening than if it were. The other two anti-Jewish attacks this week - both at the Kansas Jewish center and in Paris – were also carried out by "lone wolves".

A world war is on the rise, by an army of rogue soldiers whose motives are the same but do not answer to a specific commander. Thousands of Westerners have joined this war, both within the ranks of the jihadi groups in the Middle East and on their own accord in Europe and the United States.

Nowhere is safe, not on the green lawns of Kansas, nor on the cobblestone streets of Brussels, and certainly not in the war-torn cities of Syria. These lone wolves are not alone.