It looks like the worst has been confirmed - 3 bodies have been found in the West Bank near the city of Hebron. They are suspected to be of the 3 missing Israeli teenagers.
At this moment we do not know who killed them or how they died, but their families must be devastated and the humanity in all of us feels their loss. The people in their kidnap/murder should be treatd as criminals (and I have not come across any evidence that this is definitely by Palestinians - there could be a nutty settler with an axe to grind or who is mentally unhinged...)
However this can also lead to a bigger catastrophe for the Palestinians.
Ever since the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah, Israeli PM Netanyahu has been kicking up a fuss, trying to break the unity and punish the Palestinians for having the audacity of uniting.
Fatah has previously indicated that if the israelies were killed by Hamas, all unity deals may be off.
Netanyahu from the first moment (probably even before there was confirmation that the teenagers were missing) has been blaming Hamas and used it as a tool to politic, attack the West Bank and Gaza killing many and kidnapping hundreds of Palestinians. He always saw this as a tool to hit the Palestinians, punish them for coming up with their unity deal.
Now things will only get worse (there were some suggestions a few days ago that Israel was ready to re-occupy the Gaza Strip) and the Palestinian population will be blamed "without a doubt".
The bloodlust in Israel will be strong and with leaders like Netanyahu the consequences for the Palestinians will be dire, especially as Egypt is united with Israel when it comes to Gaza.
If the people of Israel want peace, as the aggressor, the occupier, the one with the might have to take the first step towards peace.
If they don't, they are ultimately responsible for such incidents because occupation has a price, which is ugly and has resulted in many preventable deaths.
Bombing Gaza for a criminal act in the West Bank is not the way to go but political opportunism to satisfy bloodlust and to punish the occupied victims of this whole mess.
