In the early hours of July 1, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed dozens of sites across Gaza, hours after three missing teenage Israeli settlers were found dead.

The Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, predictably seized on the boys' disappearance and death as the pretext to raid Palestinian territory, attack Hamas and expand illegal settlements.

The three boys were 19-year-old Eyal Yifrah and 16-year-olds Gilad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel. They were kidnapped in Gush Etzion, a group of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank considered illegal under international law. Their bodies were found on June 30 in a field near Hebron.

Palestinians have suffered relentless collective punishment since the boys disappeared on June 12. Israel has portrayed itself as the besieged victim.

Despite the fact that the settlers live illegally on occupied land and Israel treats Palestinians with racist contempt, Israeli officials insist that anti-Semitism is the motivation for the kidnappings.

“They were kidnapped and murdered just for being Jewish,” said Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon.

But such propaganda cannot obscure the fact that occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid are at the root of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It cannot obscure the fact that Palestinians live as an oppressed people in their own land while United States aid ensures Israel maintains overwhelming military superiority over the Palestinians.

The initial round of bombings struck 34 sites in Gaza ― without any proof linking these sites to the boys' disappearance. Now, the Israeli establishment is split over the question of whether their next move should be a full-scale invasion.

From the start, Israeli officials have announced their intention to “teach Hamas a lesson”, even though no proof has yet been furnished linking Hamas, which governs Gaza, to the boys' disappearance.

A Hamas spokesperson has denied Israeli assertions of Hamas' culpability, calling the accusations “stupid and baseless”.

After the kidnappings, the Israeli military placed more than a dozen Palestinian cities, towns and refugee camps under siege, and imposed curfews for two-and-a-half weeks. Yet the bodies turned up just 10 minutes from where they had last been seen.

As Israeli soldiers flooded into Halhul, near Hebron, several reports emerged of Jewish Israelis attacking Arabs. Among these were a taxi driver attacked with tear gas by a 17-year-old boy and a young man hospitalised after being attacked by a group of young Israelis.

Elsewhere, a Jewish man in his 20s was arrested for spray-painting “Kahane was right” on a road sign ― a reference to the ultra-nationalist rabbi Meir Kahane who won a sizable following in the 1980s by calling for the forced removal of all Arabs from Israel.

On July 1, 17-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted and killed in East Jerusalem. His family accused Israelis of killing the teenager out of revenge.

Over the past 13 years, one Palestinian child has been killed on average every three days by Israeli occupation forces.

This statistic exposes the hypocrisy of every Israeli politician seeking to fan the flames of anti-Palestinian racism. Netanyahu said the three teenaged settlers had been “abducted and murdered in cold blood by human animals”. He vowed: “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.”

Israeli economics minister and right-wing extremist Naftali Bennett said: “There is no forgiveness for murderers of children ... Now is a time for actions, not words.”

In the 18 days between the boys' disappearance and the discovery of their bodies, Israel Defense Forces raided more than 1000 homes, ransacking many of them.

More than 420 Palestinians from the West Bank were arrested, but without charge ― 58 of them had been released during the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. About 80 remain in administrative detention. At least five were killed, including a 15 year-old boy.

But the Israeli military is not done yet. The West Bank continues to be besieged, and the roads blockaded by soldiers and settler mobs alike. Dozens of military vehicles continued the extensive operations and home invasions in southern Hebron even after the bodies were found.

Dozens more homes were searched and ransacked, causing extensive property damage. Palestinians reported injuries from live ammunition. A 16 year-old boy was killed by IDF troops raiding Jenin.

Israel claims that two Palestinian men ― Marwan Kawasma and Amar Abu Aisha ― are responsible for the boys' disappearance and death. Both were previously detained by Israel multiple times and held in administrative detention without due process.

Ha'aretz has reported that the men's wives had notified Palestinian Authority security forces that their husbands were missing. The PA in turn relayed the information to the Shin Bet Caf (General Security Forces) of Israel, which then apprehended the women and interrogated them for several hours.

Kawasma's wife, who is eight months pregnant, was re-apprehended during the late-night raid on Hebron after the bodies were found on June 30. She is now being held by Israel, though she contends that she has no knowledge of her husband's whereabouts or plans.

Other family members of the men have also been detained, including the four brothers of Kawasma and the father of Abu Aisha. In an attack on Kawasma's home, an explosion destroyed the top floor and injured an infant.

Israel's response to these events has been cynical, predictable and swift. Just hours after the discovery of the boys' bodies, Netanyahu proposed avenging them by establishing a new wave of settlement construction ― in their honour.

Netanyahu framed the disappearances as a Hamas kidnapping. There is still no evidence for this charge, but most media outlets have reported it as fact.

In setting the narrative this way, Netanyahu has met another important Israeli goal: undermining the recent reconcilation between Palestinian factions Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which governs in the West Bank.

Deputy security minister Danny Danon used rhetoric familiar to anyone acquainted with Israel's past assaults on Gaza. “This tragic end will be the end of Hamas, too,” he said.

“We need to destroy Hamas ... demolish the homes of Hamas militants, destroy their ammunition stockpiles and stop all money that is funding Hamas directly or indirectly.”

A deputy minister, Tzipi Hotovely, called for a renewed war of annihilation on Hamas and a policy of targeted assassinations directed at their personnel.

This sentiment was reiterated by some of Netanyahu's most powerful US allies. The top Democrat and Republican on the House Middle East subcommittee sent a joint message to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, saying: “If it is determined that Hamas is behind this horrific tragedy, [Abbas] must immediately break up the unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.”

The military invasions, arrests and bombings are no doubt intended to provoke a reaction from Hamas. For its part, Hamas has vowed to defend Palestinians against a ground invasion, promising to “open the gates of hell” on Israel.

The Israeli military has so far reported 18 rockets fired into Israeli territory from unknown origins. These rockets have not killed or injured anyone, but Israeli leaders know full well that any violence on Hamas' part will play into the Israeli narrative of victimhood.

If Israel does not launch the full ground invasion Netanyahu is threatening, it is because there are divergent opinions about Israel's next move.

Israel's security cabinet held back-to-back emergency sessions on June 30 and July 1, but emerged without a decision on further military action.

Liberal Zionists seemed unlikely to support such a military action, on the grounds that it would damage Israel's reputation internationally.

These concerns were captured in an article by veteran war correspondent and foreign policy critic Ron Ben-Yishai titled “Israel must crush Hamas, but do it wisely”.

He wrote: “If the option of an operation in Gaza is raised, it is likely that most cabinet ministers will refuse. Why? Because Hamas in Gaza wasn't involved in the kidnap, and an IDF invasion of the Strip would be perceived as collective punishment, which the international community would not understand and even condemn.

“One of the things that the state of Israel cannot lose is international legitimacy for its actions, and [it] cannot be perceived as a country that punishes an entire population with no justifiable cause.”

Both the US and Egypt ― Israel's two most powerful allies ― have signalled that Israel should not go too far and “destabilise the situation”. Both have offered sympathies to Israel.

“As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing,” US President Barack Obama said in a statement.

But this concern for human life and suffering is, as always, selective. As Electronic Intifada editor Ali Abunimah noted: “Obama has never expressed sympathy or condolences for any of the more than 1400 Palestinian children murdered by Israeli occupation forces and settlers.”

Palestinian spoken word poet Remi Kanazi wrote on Twitter with characteristic bluntness: “As a father, Barack Obama mourns Israeli teens. As a president, Barack Obama blows up Pakistani, Yemeni and Somali teens.”

Importantly, the US and Egypt's official sympathies for Israel did not include support for a ground invasion. “I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilise the situation,” Obama said.

Regional instability will only make the US position more precarious, especially as it struggles to contain an increasingly powerful insurgency in Iraq and the transition to yet another ruler in Egypt.

If Israel's atrocities in Gaza become too gruesome to ignore, it would put Egyptian President Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi under pressure to open the Egyptian crossing into Gaza, to aid civilians in the crosshairs of an Israeli attack.

Should Israel, one of the world's most powerful militaries, invade Gaza, the largest open-air prison in the world, the eyes of the Arab world will be on Sisi. The choice between acting against Israel (and by extension the US) and doing nothing to aid Palestinians under attack is certainly a choice Sisi would rather not make.

A military strike on captive Palestinians would certainly meet with popular support inside Israel, which is in the midst of nationalistic fervour. And yet, despite all this, there remain differences of strategy at Israel's highest levels.

These choices have not been difficult for Israel in the past. During Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 to early 2009, Israel attacked Gaza, targeting civilian infrastructure and dropping white phosphorous on the captive population.

In May 2010, the IDF boarded the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship in international waters carrying humanitarian aid bound for Gaza, and killed 10 civilians.

In both instances, Israel acted swiftly, put its PR machine into motion and never looked back. There are countless other examples.

But now, Israeli rulers do not feel uniformly confident to act with unchecked brutality against an innocent population, showing a modicum of self-consciousness about what the response to such an incursion might be.

And they are not mistaken to feel that way ― as evidenced by recent victories in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targetting Israel.

Recently, the Presbyterian Church in the US voted to divest US$21 million from three corporations doing business in illegal Israeli settlements.

“We as a church cannot profit from the destruction of homes and lives,” one church official said after a vote that drew attention around the world.

In Europe, a growing number of food distribution companies are refusing to buy Israeli products produced in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Abunimah wrote: “It remains to be seen which voices Israel's leaders will heed: those demanding blood in Palestinian streets, or Israel's international sponsors who don't wish to be embarrassed and inconvenienced by another of its wild and vengeful killing sprees at a time when the rest of the region is in particularly dire shape.”

We are not powerless to affect future outcomes. If BDS victories have given Israel pause in its genocidal march to wipe Palestinians from the map, then we must further commit ourselves to winning new groups to the boycotting, divestment and sanctioning of Israeli apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing.

[Abridged from Socialist Worker. Daphna Thier contributed to the article.]

