Arab Israeli who planned terror attacks for Hezbollah gets 14 years in prison

An Arab Israeli man who obtained bombs from Hezbollah and planned terror attacks against Israelis was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Tuesday.

Diab Kahmouz, a resident of Ghajar, was found guilty of aiding an enemy during wartime and contacting a foreign agent as well as weapons-related offenses.

According to charges Kahmouz made contact with Hezbollah operatives in late 2015 through his father, who fled to Lebanon in 2006. The terror group instructed him to carry out an attack in Haifa, though he decided instead to bomb a bus stop at a junction near the northern Arab city of Tur’an, where soldiers tend to gather on Sunday mornings en route to their army bases.

For this purpose Kahmouz enlisted his brothers Yusuf and Jamil, along with two of his cousins, Muhsen Kahmouz and Mamdouh Ibrahim, and a friend, Adel Aweinat.

The cell planned to carry out the attack with explosive devices that had been smuggled across the border in May of 2016, but were unable to locate the bag holding the bombs after Diab hid it in a grove near Metulla in northern Israel. In July of that year, an Israeli farmer found the explosives and handed them over to police, who determined that the bombs had been manufactured in Lebanon — thus launching the investigation.

The cell members were arrested in September of 2016.

Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report.