Jewish would-be bomber released from prison early

A Jewish man convicted of planning to bomb an Arab girls’ school in Jerusalem over a decade ago was released early from prison on Sunday after serving over 13 years behind bars.

Ofer Gamliel gained his freedom after the state said it would not object to the Israel Prison Service Parole Board’s approval of his early release.

Previous plans to set Gamliel free, the most recent in February 2013, were blocked by the state after the Shin Bet Security Service claimed he still presented a threat to the public.

Gamliel and his accomplice Shlomi Dvir was sentenced to 15 years in prison for their part in a 2002 plot to explode a bomb outside an Arab girls’ school in the Abu Tor neighborhood of Jerusalem. The bomb was intercepted and defused by security services before it could explode.

The men were found to be members of the so-called “Bat Ayin Underground'” a group of Jewish men from the Bat Ayin settlement and the Hebron Jewish community who were suspected of carrying out revenge terror attacks on Arabs in response to a wave of Palestinian terror incidents during the Second Intifada.

Gamliel and Dvir applied for early release in 2012 after admitting remorse for their crimes and in light of their good conduct while behind bars, according to a report in the Haaretz daily at the time.

In 2009, Gamliel’s son, at the time 7 years old, was moderately injured by Moussa Tayet, an ax-wielding Palestinian terrorist who attacked a group of schoolchildren in the Bat Ayin settlement. Shlomo Nativ, 16, was killed in the attack.

Gamliel was granted a special temporary release to visit his son at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Tayet fled the scene but was later arrested by Israeli security forces.