Illustrative: IDF troops make a late-night arrest in the West Bank on January 11, 2017. (IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
Israeli security forces arrested 17 Palestinians across the West Bank overnight Sunday, including five suspects who were wanted for their involvement in “popular terror” and for attacks against Israeli citizens and soldiers.
Among those arrested were 13 alleged Hamas operatives, including a Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament.
An IDF spokesman did not specify what offenses the five were arrested for, though popular terror is a phrase often used by the army to denote rock throwing and firebomb attacks against Israeli citizens and security forces.
The IDF and the Shin Bet — Israel’s domestic security agency — also confiscated thousands of shekels in the West Bank village of Safa, near the central Israeli town of Modiin, intended for terror groups. The IDF spokesperson did not say if there was any connection between the money and the Hamas operative arrested in the same village.
The IDF removes a lathe from an illegal weapons workshop in the West Bank town of Hebron, January 12, 2017. (IDF spokesperson)
In addition, IDF soldiers and Shin Bet operatives uncovered a gun-making workshop in the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Arroub north of Hebron, confiscating four lathes used for weapons manufacturing.
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In the past year, Israeli security forces have shut down 40 such gun-making workshops in the West Bank, which manufactured guns such as those used in the Sarona Market shooting attack in Tel Aviv in June, and which have became ubiquitous throughout the West Bank during the nearly year-long wave of terrorist attacks that began in October 2015.
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