Body of Kidnaped Israeli Border Officer Found : Mideast: Rabin was willing to talk, but now he vows ‘merciless’ campaign against militant Palestinian group.

The body of an Israeli border policeman kidnaped, then killed by Palestinian guerrillas was found Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin vowed a “merciless” campaign against the militant Islamic group responsible.

Sgt. Maj. Nissim Toledano, 29, had been strangled, then stabbed to death Monday night, officials said, before the Israeli government could open talks with his kidnapers, members of the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.

Rabin, although seeking proof that Toledano was alive, had said he was willing to “talk” with the kidnapers, breaking with Israeli policy against such negotiations. He was considering the kidnapers’ demand that he free their leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder, who was imprisoned for life in the murder of suspected Israeli collaborators.

“Sgt. Maj. Nissim Toledano of the border police was murdered by the lowest of men, the wild animals of the Hamas organization,” Rabin told the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, after the body was found in a grove of trees along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. “Toledano was killed despite the readiness of the State of Israel to talk with them.”

Yassin, speaking in a television interview Sunday evening from the prison where he is held, had urged Toledano’s abductors not to harm the policeman.

“I am not for killing him,” said Yassin, 57, who is a charismatic figure in the Gaza Strip despite almost complete paralysis from the neck down. The Israeli authorities, he said, “should be given some time to respond.”

But Hamas spokesmen abroad said Israeli authorities had moved too slowly and, with their arrest of 1,200 Hamas supporters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, had signaled not their willingness to talk, as Rabin had asserted, but a determination to exterminate Hamas.

In Lebanon, Hamas representative Abu Mohammed Mustafa said his group might now carry out further kidnapings of Israeli soldiers “as long as Israel carries out detentions and still occupies our land.”

Deported by Israel in 1990 for his activities in Hamas, Mustafa added: “Israel is to blame for the killing of the soldier because they did not release Sheik Ahmed Yassin and because they refused to negotiate.”

The real Hamas objective, Rabin countered in the Knesset, is to undermine peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians by inflaming emotions on both sides. “In spite of the pain, we will continue to make peace,” Rabin declared. “It is the intention of Hamas to kill Jews, to kill Israelis--and to kill the peace process.”

Rabin said that the crackdown on Hamas, begun with the arrest on Monday and Tuesday of 700 supporters in the West Bank and more than 500 in the Gaza Strip, will be intensified until Hamas poses no serious threat either to Israeli security or to the peace talks. “We are going to use any and every possible means within the law in this war against terrorism,” added Gad Ben-Ari, a Rabin adviser. “If terrorism cannot be abolished, we can minimize its effects.”

But Toledano’s abduction and killing has, nonetheless, put the peace negotiations in the balance. Much depends on the severity of the Israeli response--and the Palestinian reaction to it.

On the Israeli right, feeling is building rapidly that Rabin is risking too much with his gestures and concessions to the Palestinians and the country’s Arab neighbors; some critics contend that the shift in Israel’s stance under Rabin has shown weakness and tempted groups like Hamas to push it harder.

“We have but one way: It is split in two--the quest for peace and the all-out war on terror,” Rabin told the Knesset. “We have no intention of stopping the peace talks under way in Washington.”

After word of Toledano’s death spread, crowds gathered outside his home in Lod with many shouting in Hebrew “Death to the Arabs!” and “Revenge!” Lod Mayor Maxim Levy appealed for calm as the anger mounted but was shouted down by ultranationalist followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

As Jewish demonstrators, led by members of Kahane Lives, started to march toward an Arab neighborhood of the city, border police formed a human chain to halt them. Police reinforcements were stationed in Jerusalem and Ramle, another mixed, Jewish-Arab town, as well as in Lod through the night to prevent revenge attacks and communal violence.

Meanwhile, among Palestinians frustration is rising over the slow pace of the negotiations for autonomy and the independence they hope will follow; support is consequently growing for “rejectionist” groups, such as Hamas, opposed to the negotiations and to anything short of a Palestinian state.

Hamas, formed at the start of the intifada, the Palestinian rebellion against Israeli occupation, demands a pullout from the Mideast peace talks, now in their 14th month, and it has been trying to raise its profile with daring attacks on Israeli targets. Six Israeli soldiers, including Toledano, have been killed in ambushes and shootouts in the past eight days.

Consequently, the crackdown, while attempting to suppress Hamas, could add to its popular support as a movement fighting for Palestinian independence.