The two youth who admitted Thursday that they lied about an alleged kidnapping by terrorists actually had escaped a lynch after they tried to break into a car in an Arab village, investigators said. The two teenagers are students at a high school in Yitzhar in northern Samaria and are not residents of the community.
They are suspected of having entered an Arab village near Shechem and breaking into a parked vehicle after midnight. A crowd of angry Arabs appeared and beat them until Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces rescued them. However, they then reported to the IDF that two Jews have been kidnapped, later changing the story to say that a third friend had been abducted.
They admitted they had lied after the IDF had sent helicopters into the area and conducted house-to-house searches.