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UN Watch – an NGO, which among other things monitors the United Nations for perceived anti-Israel bias – last week flew the mothers of the missing youths to address the UN's Human Rights Council, where Rachel Frankel, mother of 16-year-old Naftali, complained not enough was being done internationally to bring back the boys.
On the Palestinian side, both in statements and on social media, there has been a similar complaint: that the Palestinian deaths and arrests and "collective punishment" have been ignored.
Amid the recriminations, other critical questions have been thrown up. How much of the search operation has been about finding the boys and how much of it has been directed at trying – not for the first time – to smash Hamas on the West Bank, whom Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, holds responsible?
The febrile politics swirling around the kidnapping have sucked in other issues too, not least the increasingly acrimonious debate over deals to release Palestinian prisoners, including those freed in exchange for Hamas's release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. More than 50 of those prisoners have been re-arrested in the wake of the abduction.
"There are two points to this," a senior Israeli officer told the Guardian a week ago. "To bring back the missing boys – who are citizens not soldiers – and find those responsible. The second part of the campaign is not new; it is to target Hamas, a terrorist organisation sitting in Gaza which is trying to re-establish in the West Bank."
In that second sentiment he echoed the words of the Israeli army chief of staff Benny Gantz, who has also said the aim is "to damage Hamas as much as possible". That operation has seen the Israeli army swamp the West Bank, around Hebron in particular, with three brigades.
While many of those who have been arrested are figures associated with Hamas, politically or otherwise, and have spent time in Israeli prisons, some of the targets have been surprising. The Israeli army has raided universities and media offices, including This Week in Palestine, a dairy and a Coca-Cola plant, swamping Palestinian towns and villages in numbers unprecedented in recent years.
By the end of the operation, it is envisaged, the number of Palestinians in detention without trial will have doubled to almost 400; the city of Hebron alone will have lost income in the order of $10m for each day it has been closed.
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http://www.theguardian.co(...)-boys-recriminations