Shin Bet: 72 residents of southern Israel arrested on security charges since start of this year

The Shin Bet internal security service says that since the start of this year it has arrested 72 residents of the south and indicted about 50 of them, over “activity that endangers the security of the state,” including “promoting terrorist action, smuggling arms at the border.” All but five of the people arrested are Israeli citizens, according to the Shin Bet.

Among the people who were indicted are six Israeli citizens from the Bedouin town of Segev Shalom who were charged earlier this year in the Beersheba District Court with “serious terrorist crimes” in two separate cases, the Shin Bet says.

The first case involved an attempt to form a “military battalion in the town” in the style of West Bank “terrorist battalions” out of “Palestinian affinity,” and the second plot involved a plan to attack Beersheba’s popular Forum nightclub “out of identification with various terrorist organizations, including Islamic State and Hamas,” the agency says.

The two cases are the only examples given for the indictments in the Shin Bet statement. Both were made public by the Shin Bet earlier this year, and it’s unclear what prompted the agency to issue today’s statement.

An unnamed senior Shin Bet official cited in the statement says those and other cases “demonstrate the security risk from the formation of cells of Israeli citizens, some of which are quasi-military, that seek to promote terrorist attacks on Israeli territory.”

The suspect in the Forum case, Abdullah Gergawi, was also “in contact with Islamic State activists and expressed intent to go to Islamic State combat zones abroad,” the Shin Bet says.

When police and the Shin Bet first made the plot public in August, they said the 20-year-old suspect was arrested in July for allegedly planning to car-bomb the nightclub, and had also been in contact with “a person who presented himself as a Palestinian terror operative.”

In the Segev Shalom battalion case, the Shin Bet says five young men were indicted: A “cell leader,” who had worked to replicate the West Bank battalion model in Segev Shalom and incited to terrorism on social media; a person who agreed in principle to carry out the commander’s plans for a shooting attack at the Segev Shalom police station and a stabbing and shooting attack at the Beersheba Central Bus Station; an “engineer,” who watched instructional material on explosives and was “responsible for preparing explosives against Israeli security forces”; a person who “expressed agreement” to take part in the proposed Segev Shalom police station attack; and another person who also agreed to join the Segev Shalom cell, had planned for the past two years to carry out a stabbing in the name of Islamic State, and “himself planned to carry out an independent bombing attack when released from prison.”

When the police and the Shin Bet first made the case public in July, they reported just four people who were arrested and indicted, including the commander and the engineer.

The statement at the time also referred to the Segev Shalom group as a cell, not a battalion, and did not mention any “Palestinian affinity.” It said the commander had decided to form a terrorist framework to fight Israeli security forces following the 2021 riots in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel.