BICOM

Israel’s Shin Bet security agency announced yesterday that it had apprehended a four-man terror cell in the West Bank, which had been planning to attack Jewish worshippers at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus.

The holy site is located in an enclave surrounded by Palestinian-controlled territory. Jewish Israeli pilgrims are only permitted access in coordination with the IDF, although some visit the tomb of their own accord. In 2011, Palestinians shot dead a 25-year-old worshipper travelling to the site, Ben-Joseph Livnat, a nephew of then-culture and sport minister Limor Livnat.

In a statement yesterday, the Shin Ben said that “in cooperation with the IDF,” it had “arrested a terror cell compromised of four Palestinian residents of the towns of Tulkarm, Nablus, and Kabatya.” Although all four suspects live in the West Bank, they were directed from Gaza by an Islamic Jihad member named Mohammed Darwish.

The suspects were named as Nasim Damiri, 30, of Tulkarm, a member of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement; his cousin Mohammed Damiri, 23, of Tulkarm, who is a PA policeman; Yasser Tzarawi, 25, of Nablus , a known Hamas member; and Adwan Nizal, 24, of Kabatya, who is affiliated to Islamic Jihad. The four members were apparently barely known to each other. The Damiris were to carry out an attack using a pre-placed bomb and an assault rifle. Meanwhile, Tzarawi and Nizal were to organise logistical support.

Yesterday’s announcement comes just weeks after the Shin Bet apprehended a Hamas terror cell in the West Bank, which was responsible for shooting and killing 25-year-old Malachi Rosenfeld as he drove near the settlement of Shilo. Around the same time, the Shin Bet also arrested a terror cell with links to PA over the deadly shooting of Danny Gonen from the central city of Lod, who was shot and killed by a gunman as he returned from hiking with a friend near the West Bank settlement of Dolev.