65 arrests in search for teens

A spokesman confirmed that the Israeli army had made more than 65 arrests in the West Bank overnight.

On Wednesday, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said that those detained included 51 Palestinians who had been among the 1,027 freed in exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011.

Shalit, an Israeli soldier, had been captured by Palestinian militants believed to have been affiliated with the radical Hamas organization in a cross-border raid in 2006.

Israel believes Hamas was behind the abduction of three Israeli teenagers on June 12.

The three religious seminary students aged 16 to 19 had been hitchhiking home late at night in the West Bank when they disappeared.

More than 200 arrests have since been made in a desperate attempt to find them, roads have been blocked and homes searched. This amounts to the most significant ground operation in the West Bank in over five years.

Israeli authorities have said they believed Hamas to have been behind the abduction of the teens.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the international community to isolate the leadership of Hamas in retaliation.

The international community "has to condemn Hamas for its terrorist activities and ... must call on President Abbas to end his pact with Hamas," Netanyahu said, referring to a recent reconciliation between the organization and the Palestinan Authority aiming to form a unified government.

The European Union has been cautious. Foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton condemned the abductions "in the strongest terms," but the EU and US have refrained from explicitly blaming Hamas for the kidnappings and have shown no signs of ending their readiness to work with the new Palestinian government.

rg/mkg (dpa, AP, AFP)