After Israel's retaliation against Hamas and a concentrated effort to go after the terror group's financing began earlier, many are wondering where is the money is coming from to support Hamas? Matthew Levitt, Washington Institute Counterterrorism program director, joins Simon Constable to discuss. Photo: AP

HAMAS has warned that Israel will pay for the kidnap and murder of a Palestinian teenager in annexed east Jerusalem, in suspected revenge for the murder of three Israeli teenagers.

“We send our message to the Zionist entity and its leaders, which hold direct responsibility (for the murder), that our people will not let this crime pass, nor all the killings and destruction by your settlers,” the Islamist movement said on Wednesday.

“You will pay the price for these crimes,” it said of the incident, in which the Palestinian youth was reportedly kidnapped and killed early on Wednesday.

“I demand the Israeli government punish the killers if it wants peace between the Palestinian and the Israeli peoples,” said Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

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Netanyahu also condemned the “despicable murder” and ordered investigators to work “as quickly as possible” to track down the perpetrators, while urging both sides “not to take the law into their own hands”.

Eyewitnesses told AFP 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khder was seen being forced into a car by three Israelis in east Jerusalem.

And police confirmed a body had been found in a forest in Givat Shaul in west Jerusalem, although they refused to link the two incidents.

However, DNA tests proved the body was that of the missing teenager, his father said.

“The body belongs to my son,” Hussein Abu Khder told AFP, saying his identity had been confirmed through tests but the cause of death was not immediately clear.

Israel blamed Hamas for abducting and killing the three Israelis, and waged a crushing arrest campaign against the movement’s West Bank network, which resulted in the deaths of several Palestinians.

Hamas, in turn, accused Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “giving orders to settlers” to carry out Wednesday’s kidnap.

It was unclear who was behind the incident.

The murder triggered violent clashes in east Jerusalem, as Palestinians hurled stones and molotov cocktails at riot police, who responded with rubber bullets, tear gas and sound bombs, injuring dozens of people, an AFP correspondent said.