The Israeli security services announced on Tuesday May 24 that they had dismantled a cell of the Palestinian group Hamas which was preparing anti-Israeli attacks, including the assassination of a deputy and leader of the far right.
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Five Palestinians from East Jerusalem, members of Hamas, were arrested in April for “among other things, planned shooting attacks against Israeli targets and public figures, including MP Itamar Ben Gvirsaid the Shin Bet, the internal security service. They also planned to bomb the Jerusalem light rail with a drone and abduct soldiers, the Shin Bet added in a statement, saying the drone had been seized.
A network ‘aiming to cause trouble’
Three of the suspects, Rashid al-Rishq, Mohammad al-Salaymé and Hamza Abu Nab, were charged on Tuesday with membership in an organization “terroristfor planning murder, kidnappings and bombings, as well as an attack on a police officer and disturbing public order. The other two, Soufiane al-Ajlouni and Mansour Safadi, will be charged soon, a Shin Beth spokesman told AFP.
One of the five men also had “set up a network of activists in Jerusalem aimed at causing unrestduring Ramadan, the month of Muslim fasting which ended at the end of April, according to the same source. In April, clashes between Israeli and Palestinian police left one dead and nearly 300 injured Palestinians on the esplanade of the Mosques in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian area occupied and annexed by Israel. The five suspects took part in these “riotssaid the Shin Bet, adding that some of them had undergone shooting training.
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Itamar Ben Gvir, an MP known for his inflammatory statements against the Palestinians, in a statement on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of havingencouraged violence against him” these last months. Sworn enemies, Israel and Hamas, an Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, have fought several wars, the last of which dates from May 2021.