Jordan jails man who plotted suicide attack in Israel
Conviction follows Amman’s arrest of 20 others who planned to smuggle arms to West Bank for terror attacks
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
A Jordanian man was given a six-month prison sentence Wednesday in a Jordanian court for plotting to attack Israel.
The man was caught in the summer as he tried to cross into Israel to carry out a suicide attack, Israel Radio reported.
The sentence came as Arab media reported this week that Jordanian security forces arrested 20 men on suspicion of forming a military wing and planning to smuggle arms into the West Bank to be used in terror attacks against Israelis.
The men, all members of the Muslim Brotherhood or Jordan’s engineers’ guild, were arrested after two of the 20 returned from a solidarity visit to the Gaza Strip where they received military training, according to Qatar-based al-Jazeera.
The satellite channel reported Sunday that the men attempted to train others in military operations to be carried out against Israelis in the West Bank.
They also collected money for the purchase of weapons to be smuggled into the West Bank, or bought in the Palestinian territory.
It was not clear from the report when the 20 were arrested.
The arrests came after tensions between the Jordanian regime and the Islamist organization peaked last month. The Muslim Brotherhood’s deputy secretary-general Zaki Bani Rsheid was arrested on November 21 over derogatory comments he posted on Facebook against the United Arab Emirates.
According to al-Jazeera, the Jordanian arrests coincided with a similar Israeli crackdown in the West Bank, where a ring of 30 operatives guided from Turkey was exposed late last month.
Two of the operatives arrested, engineers Abdulla Zeitawi and Muhammad Jabara, have Jordanian citizenship.
The Hamas cell had planned a series of terror attacks, including on Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium during a soccer match, according to the Shin Bet security service.
Elhanan Miller contributed to this report.
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