Naftali Bennett, leader of Israel's Jewish Home party, at a foreign-policy debate organized by The Israel Project on Jan. 8, 2013, two weeks before the 2013 Israeli legislative election in which the Jewish Home home 12 seats in the Knesset. Photo: Mati Milstein/The Israel Project.

Reuters – Israel decided on Tuesday to widen a crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank after troops detained more than 40 members of the Palestinian Islamist group in sweeps conducted in tandem with a search for three missing Jewish teenagers.

The Jewish state accuses Hamas of kidnapping the three youths after they left their religious school in a Jewish settlement in the occupied territory on Thursday. While neither claiming nor denying responsibility, Hamas has commented that abductions were a justified response to the plight of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by its Israeli enemy.

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