Israel seizes guns, gun-making tools in the West Bank
IDF and Shin Bet confiscate weapons, ammo and equipment in crackdown on homemade guns used in terror attacks
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
The Shin Bet, together with the IDF, has seized dozens of homemade weapons and gun-making equipment in Palestinian cities in the West Bank over the past few months, the security service announced on Sunday.
During one raid on Saturday, Shin Bet officers confiscated 15 rifles that had been hidden in the Yabad village, outside Jenin.
The officers learned of the weapons’ locations after interrogating a gunsmith they had arrested and questioned earlier, the service said.
On March 1, security forces conducted a similar raid in Nablus, seizing guns, bullets and weapon-making equipment.
“The IDF and the Shin Bet are constantly carrying out operations to thwart the creation and sale of weaponry in the West Bank,” the Shin Bet said this month.
Improvised submachine guns, based off the Carl Gustav design, have been used frequently and to devastating effect in the ongoing wave of violence.
Most recently, two Palestinian terrorists opened fire with two Carl Gustav submachine guns at a city bus in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem and then at police officers near the Old City. During the firefight, an elderly Arab Israeli man was seriously injured.
The day before, a Palestinian gunman shot and seriously injured two police officers with a Carl Gustav-style submachine gun in a drive-by shooting in East Jerusalem.
Three terrorists armed with such guns also shot and killed 19-year-old Border Police officer Hadar Cohen in February.
Some 68 shooting attacks have been carried out in the West Bank and Jerusalem since October 1, many of them with this kind of fabricated gun, the IDF said in a statement.
Twenty-nine Israelis and four foreign nationals have been killed in a wave of Palestinian terrorism and violence since October. Over 180 Palestinians have also been killed, some two-thirds of them while attacking Israelis, and the rest during clashes with troops, according to the Israeli army.
