BICOM

Israeli security forces discovered a number of illegal Palestinian weapons supplies over the weekend in the West Bank.

In a combined effort between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Israeli Police, a Palestinian man was arrested on Saturday at a security checkpoint near Bethlehem in the West Bank. He was found to be in possession of three improvised firearms, two magazines, ammunition and bullets. It is thought that he was attempting to transfer the weapons to a hiding place.

Earlier on Saturday, in a separate incident, a Palestinian man was arrested carrying a firearm in the Deheisheh Refugee Camp, also near Bethlehem.

Meanwhile, it is reported this morning that overnight, Israeli troops uncovered and closed two weapons manufacturing plants in the West Bank and arrested 16 Palestinians in connection with the operation.

The weekend police activity followed the arrest of 14 Palestinians last Wednesday night suspected of taking a leading role in violent West Bank protests. One was reportedly a Hamas member. During the arrest operations, Israeli soldiers found two pipe bombs and various weapons parts. Most of the arrests were made in the central and northern West Bank.

In a statement yesterday announcing the latest arrests, the IDF said that it has dismantled 32 Palestinian weapon manufacturing workshops and seized over 350 firearms in the West Bank since the beginning of 2016.

The Times of Israel says that weapons raids have been stepped up ahead of this week’s Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Succot, when tensions are often heightened. Writing in Yediot Ahronot, Yossi Yehoshua says that the upcoming holidays and yesterday’s shooting attack in Jerusalem, which killed two Israelis, shows that “we are on the threshold of a boiling point that will require a ‘cooling blanket,’ both operationally and politically”.

Since October, a wave of Palestinian violence has killed 42 people. The vast majority of these attacks have been carried out by apparent lone Palestinian individuals, acting independently from terror groups, but with relatively easy access to weapons.