BICOM

Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet yesterday announced that it had thwarted an attempt by a Hamas-affiliated Palestinian terror group to set up a West Bank cell aimed at kidnapping Israelis.

Working alongside Israel’s Prisons Service, the Shin Bet said that it had stopped the plot in the “first stages of planning the attack.” Apparently, the main suspect, 24-year-old Muhammad Bel from Zeitoun in Gaza who has been imprisoned in Eshel Prison since 2008, was working on behalf of the Holy Warriors Brigade, an offshoot of the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which now has extremely close ties to Hamas. Bel recruited two additional Palestinian prisoners, Ali Harub, a 21-year-old from a village near Hebron and Rajab Salah Al-din, 53, from Hizme near Ramallah.

The three suspects apparently worked together, using their contacts outside prison to try and establish a West Bank cell which would be charged with the task of kidnapping Israelis. All three apparently confessed during questioning and were charged with terror offenses at Beersheba District Court in late December. A Shin Bet statement said the Holy Warriors Brigade had “adopted extremist Islamist characteristics” since splitting from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and “We can say that in effect, the Holy Warriors Brigades is a Hamas front-group in every way.” According to Shin Bet, the plot was an attempt “to expand its field of operations to the West Bank.”

Underscoring simmering tensions and security concerns in the West Bank, Palestinian gunmen yesterday fired on an Israeli car travelling near Nablus. Earlier this month, firebombs and a pipe bomb were hurled at Israeli cars near Bethlehem. Since October, there have been a number of serious terror attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. Last month, two police officers were stabbed in separate incidents. In October, an Israeli man was bludgeoned to death in the Jordan Valley and in September an IDF soldier was kidnapped and murdered near Beit Amin and another was shot dead in Hebron.