In crackdown on illegal guns, IDF shutters 2 West Bank workshops

In early-morning raids Tuesday, Israeli troops shut down two workshops that were allegedly used to produce illegal weapons in Jenin and outside Hebron, the army said.

The raids were part of the army’s recent increased effort to curb the production and sale of illegal guns in the West Bank. Thus far this year, the army says it has shut down 37 illegal gunsmithing workshops and confiscated more than 370 weapons.

Just after midnight on Tuesday, members of the IDF’s Menashe Brigade, which operates in the northern West Bank, along with Border Police officers, welded shut the doors to a building in the northern West Bank city of Jenin that they believed had been used to create illegal guns.

A suspect was also arrested in connection with the workshop, an army spokesperson said.

A similar operation was carried out in the village of Yatta, outside Hebron, by the Judea Brigade, which is responsible for that area.

During additional sweeps in the village, troops located “a homemade gun with compatible bullets, a suitcase full of 15 knives, a number of bullets and inciting material,” the army said.

The owner of the workshop, along with two others, was arrested by the IDF troops and handed over to police and the Shin Bet security service for further questioning, the spokesperson said.

Yatta, like the rest of the Hebron area, has been a focal point of terrorist activities over the past year of Palestinian violence. Yatta is the hometown of the terrorist gunmen who killed four Israelis in the Sarona market terror attack, and the teenage stabber who brutally killed Dafna Meir, a mother of six, in her home in the nearby Otniel settlement.

Though the army has said it’s seized hundreds of guns, at least some of them — a blunderbuss confiscated in May, for instance — likely would not, or could not, ben used in terror attacks.

Indeed, many of the guns circulating in the West Bank are used to fire off celebratory gunshots during weddings and other occasions, a common custom in Palestinian society.

However, the fear is that those guns, purchased for personal defense or celebratory events, may one day be used in terror attacks.

In a bid to crack down on that practice, Israeli soldiers temporarily shut down a wedding hall on Monday in the West Bank village of Eizariya, just outside Jerusalem, after multiple incidents in which wedding attendees fired their guns into the air, the army said.

After multiple warnings, the owner of the building was given 30 days to address the issue or his business would be permanently shuttered.

According to the army, residents of nearby Maale Adumim often complained of hearing the gunshots “and bullets were even found” in the settlement, the army said.

“This phenomenon presents a real life-threatening risk to residents of the community,” the army said.

Last month, a 10-year-old boy was reportedly killed by a stray bullet fired in celebration during a wedding near Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip.

The Eizariya hall’s owner had received two warnings before Israel issued the closure order on Monday. He claimed to be incapable of controlling the armed guests at his venue, the Palestinian Ma’an news site reported.

Israeli soldiers also arrested two other Palestinian suspects during the early morning raids in the West Bank, one at the Jalazoun refugee camp, outside Ramallah, and the other in Budrus, north of Modiin. Both were picked up for allegedly throwing stones, the army said.

Troops also escorted some 800 worshipers to the Joseph’s Tomb pilgrimage site — a monthly occurrence — in the Palestinian city of Nablus. As with nearly every visit, local residents threw rocks at the soldiers guarding the religious Jews before the troops repelled the rioters with non-lethal means. There were no reports of serious injuries or damage on either side.

In East Jerusalem, the Israel Police arrested nine local residents accused of taking part in riots against law enforcement, as part of a crackdown on “rock throwers, Molotov cocktail throwers and those that shoot fireworks at civilians and at houses” in the adjacent Jewish neighborhoods, police said.

The suspects were picked up from the Shuafat and al-Ayda refugee camps, as well as the Issawiya and Ras al-Amud neighborhoods, police said.