Police Find Body of Israeli Tot

In a desolate, rain-soaked field on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Israeli police Tuesday found the body of a 22-month-old girl who had disappeared three days earlier from her father’s home, marking the sad end to a search that had captivated the nation.

Missing-child cases, all too common in much of the West and particularly in the United States, are a rarity here, and millions of Israelis treated the disappearance of Hodaya Kedem-Pimstein almost as they would a tragedy in their own families.

Police said the girl’s father was the prime suspect. He was already under arrest when the body was found, and authorities said they intended to go to court today to seek to keep him in custody while they gathered more evidence. The case had dominated Israeli newspaper headlines and radio and television newscasts since the girl went missing Saturday, garnering an extraordinary amount of attention in a land where the daily drumbeat of violence -- suicide bombings, shooting attacks, military confrontations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- rarely falls silent.

Even with more than 6 million people, Israel at times has the feel of a village, and this was one of those times. People talked about the toddler’s disappearance in shops, on buses, at office gatherings, sometimes calling her by name, sometimes referring only to “the little one.” Photographs of Hodaya, curly-haired and chubby-cheeked, looked out each day from the front pages of the major newspapers.

When the news broke Tuesday afternoon that her body had been found, word spread quickly. In one Jerusalem restaurant, a waiter came out of the kitchen and told the diners, who sighed, shook their heads and asked him for details.

The intense interest in the case was heightened Sunday when a 5-year-old Arab girl was reported missing in East Jerusalem, but police eventually said that case appeared to have been a dispute involving rival clans.

Police said suspicion fell quickly on Hodaya’s father, Eli Pimstein, who reportedly gave inconsistent statements to authorities about the disappearance and subsequent events. He said publicly several times that the child apparently wandered out of his house while he was in the bathroom.

Pimstein and the child’s mother, Roni Kedem, are separated, and the girl was visiting her father when she disappeared.

The Jerusalem neighborhood where Hodaya vanished, a working-class enclave called Kiryat Yovel, was the scene of two recent suicide bombings by Palestinian militants. But Israeli authorities, for reasons they said they preferred not to detail, swiftly ruled out any involvement by Palestinians.

Thousands of volunteers on foot and horseback helped search for the child Sunday and Monday, combing wooded areas and back roads in and around Kiryat Yovel.

Police, who imposed a blackout on many details of the case, didn’t say how they knew to look in the muddy field where they recovered the body from a shallow grave. The child’s clothes were found nearby.

News reports alluded, though gingerly, to alleged domestic troubles between the girl’s parents. Israeli television reported that Pimstein, who had lost his job, had stopped making child-support and other payments to Hodaya’s mother.

Both parents gave highly emotional interviews as the search dragged on. Kedem sobbed and pleaded with anyone who might have information to come forward.

Pimstein broke into tears during radio interviews hours before the body was discovered, saying he didn’t mind the tough questioning by police because he wanted to do all he could to help them find his daughter.