BICOM

Israel’s Shin Bet security agency announced yesterday that it had uncovered and thwarted a Hamas terror cell planning attacks on Israelis during the upcoming Jewish holiday season.

Two Arab residents of East Jerusalem, Ahmad Rishak, 23, from Shuafat, and Ismail Abu Mfalfal, 27, from Abu Dis, have had indictments filed against them having been recruited by a Hamas cell in Ramallah. Both work as cleaners at the Mamilla shopping centre, which is situated just outside Jerusalem’s Old City and is popular with tourists and Jewish and Arab Jerusalemites alike. As Jerusalem residents, the two men hold Israeli identity cards and are therefore not subject to the same security checks as West Bank Palestinians. Rishak and Mfalfal confessed to intending to plant a homemade pipe bomb, packed with forty metal pellets in order to inflict the maximum number of death and injuries. They had planned to disguise it as a gift and place it in a rubbish bin.

Their three co-conspirators from Ramallah have not yet been indicted, but are thought to have manufactured the bomb. One was named as Hamdi Romana and the investigation, which involved Shin Bet, the IDF and the police, uncovered an explosives laboratory in Romana’s home, including instruction manuals on how to construct bombs.

In addition to the planned bombing at Mamilla, the Shin Bet said that during questioning, the terror cell members also revealed initial plans for additional attacks, including “harming IDF soldiers by booby-trapping homes in Ramallah, manufacturing and firing rockets at Israeli communities near Ramallah and attempting to get hold of handguns to fire on soldiers.”

In another sign of Hamas activity, Maariv reports that Egyptian military forces are conducting a wholesale destruction of smuggling tunnels from Gaza, which they suspect Hamas has used to supply arms and fighters to Islamist groups which have launched numerous attacks on Egyptian forces in Sinai.