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 Israel blames Hamas for the abduction of the Jewish seminary
students, who went missing last Thursday. The Islamist movement,
which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, has neither
claimed nor denied responsibility for the kidnapping.
Since the disappearance of Gil-Ad Shaer and U.S.-Israeli national
Naftali Fraenkel, both aged 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, Israeli raids
have spread from house-to-house searches though darkened homes in
Hebron, a Hamas stronghold, to other parts of the occupied West
Bank.
"We are turning Hamas membership into a ticket to hell," Naftali
Bennett, a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
security cabinet, told army radio on Tuesday.
The Palestinian Information Ministry accused Israel of inflicting
collective punishment on Palestinians in the territory. "An entire
population is being held hostage to the whims of the Israeli
occupation," it said.
The Israeli military said it had detained 41 Hamas militants in
overnight raids, raising to more than 200 the number arrested since
Friday. Israel officials acknowledged the operation was two-fold -
finding the missing teenagers and weakening Hamas.
 Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who signed a
unity government deal with Hamas in April, has condemned both the
kidnapping and the Israeli raids.
FIVE PALESTINIANS WOUNDED
Mirroring scenes played out in other Palestinian communities in the
West Bank, Israeli soldiers filed through a street of shuttered
homes and shops in the town of Jenin on Tuesday, throwing stun
grenades and firing rubber bullets at Palestinian stone-throwers who
confronted them.
Israeli and Palestinian security sources said soldiers and police
had wounded five Palestinians in Jenin and in clashes near the towns
of Ramallah and Nablus.
In Gaza, Israel bombed four militant targets early on Tuesday in
response to rocket fire at southern Israel. There were no reported
casualties in these incidents.
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Netanyahu's security cabinet was scheduled to reconvene on Tuesday
to weigh further measures against Hamas.
One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they could
include deporting West Bank Hamas leaders to Gaza.
On Monday, Netanyahu said the effort to retrieve the three
teenagers, who disappeared while hitchhiking in the West Bank, was
complicated and that Israelis "must be prepared for the possibility
it could take time".
Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli general, said the lack of progress
in finding the teens, six days after they disappeared, signaled that
the chances of finding them were dwindling.
But Eiland said the abductions had provided an opportunity to target
Hamas in operations that could sabotage the new Palestinian unity
government, which Israel shuns and whose formation it cited in
freezing peace talks with Abbas in April.
"The fragile links between the (Abbas-led Palestinian) Authority and
Hamas could become more of a crack," Eiland said on Israel Radio, a
day after the Islamist group condemned as a "knife in the back" PA
security cooperation with Israel.
(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Gareth Jones)
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