State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf on Tuesday linked Hamas to the murders of three Israeli teenagers whose bodies were discovered Monday. Hamas’s involvement in the murders promises to problematize relations between the terror group and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, which formed a unity government just weeks before the kidnappings.

Harf told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that there were indications pointing to Hamas involvement in what she called the “despicable” killings of Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach, and Gilad Shaar:

MS. HARF: The investigation’s still —

QUESTION: Right, right.

MS. HARF: — as I said, there are many indications pointing to Hamas’s involvement.

QUESTION: Yeah. But let me finish. Because as we saw with many incidents in the past decade, al-Qaida was very quick to claim responsibility for things for which it had no responsibility. Going back to the point that Said was raising about restraint, is the U.S. concerned or satisfied with how the Israeli Government has been responding in the wake of the discovery of these young men’s bodies?

MS. HARF: I’m just not going to characterize it in any way other than to say we’re calling on both sides to show restraint. And again, there are indications, many indications at this point, pointing to Hamas’s involvement. I wasn’t – the investigation is still ongoing, and we want to get to the bottom of what happened here.

Over the course of the 18-day search to find the missing boys, top Fatah officials had said that any Hamas involvement in the abductions would “mark the crossing of a red line,” and would void the unity agreement.

Alan Johnson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), assessed that the Palestinian population stands at a kind of crossroads:

Although Hamas has not moved one inch towards moderation, the international community recently tripped over itself in its haste to recognise and fund, with their tax payers money, the Palestinian unity government over which Hamas now has part control (to suggest otherwise is faux-naivety). Hamas looks at all this and it calculates the West lacks the will to resist it. In time, it thinks, Israel will be isolated.

It is a serious misreading. The Palestinians have a choice: to support Hamas, terror and destruction, or support Abbas, negotiations and statehood. Time to choose. It is time for the international community to tell the Palestinians that there is no third option. Enough is enough.

[Photo: U.S. Department of State / YouTube]