BICOM

A top Hamas leader has admitted that the organisation was behind the June kidnapping and murder of three Jewish Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. The incident gripped the country, sparked a large-scale military search and contributed to the conditions leading to the current Gaza conflict.

Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaer, and Naftali Frenkel, both 16, were abducted while hitchhiking in the West Bank. Their bodies were eventually discovered by Israeli security forces near Hebron in early July. At the time, Israel named two Hamas members from the Hebron area as the prime suspects in connection with the abduction, with the organisation’s leaders insisting they had no information on the kidnappings.

However, this week, senior Hamas leader and cleric Salah al-Aruri, who is based in Turkey told a conference of Muslim scholars that “the kidnapping to Hebron of the three settlers” was an “operation spoken of far and wide.” Al-Aruri “blessed the heroic action” which he said was “carried out by the al-Qassam Brigades,” the military wing of Hamas. Al-Aruri’s statement constitutes the first admission of responsibility for the murders by a Hamas official.

Earlier this month, Israel arrested Hussam Kawasme, thought to be the leader of the cell which carried out the kidnapping of Yifrah, Shaer and Frenkel. Kawasme apparently admitted that the cell received funding from Hamas operatives in order to carry out the operation.

Meanwhile, al-Aruri was also named earlier this week by Israel’s Shin Bet security agency as the mastermind behind a Hamas plan to overthrow the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. On Monday, the Shin Bet said it had arrested more than 90 Hamas activists planning to carry out a string of attacks on Israel, foment violence on the Temple Mount and use the instability to carry out a military coup against the PA. President Mahmoud Abbas said that the discovery “could have dangerous implications for the unity of the Palestinian people.”