Throughout the last 18 days, as the search for three missing teenagers kidnapped in Gush Etzion stretched out, a couple of sentences have kept popping into my head. With report after report barrelling into the news of the Israeli army’s rampage through the West Bank – the raids, shootings and arrests that were ostensibly a part of the search for the three youths – the words of Donald Rumsfeld to a Department of Defense staffer in the immediate wake of 9/11 flashed through my mind repeatedly: “Go massive. Sweep it all up, things related and not.”

(Ignore the mis-transcription of ‘Go’ as ‘So’. See here for the full explanation of the briefing by Rumsfeld and context, and here for the full set of notes along with the Department of Defense letter accompanying the notes, which were released under a Freedom of Information Act request. I came across these notes a number of years ago while researching the Taliban.)

Now, as the (perhaps) inevitable outcome of this tragic event has arrived, we are going to see another example of how governments with immense military capability react when their civilians are attacked. Three lives have been criminally cut short, and an entire people will bear the brunt of the collective punishment. As the families of the boys grieve, and Israelis call for blood, the security apparatus will be sizing up its list of targets – related and not. We are in this for the long haul.