Shin Bet says it foiled Jerusalem bus bombing late last year
Five-person cell composed of Fatah and Hamas members arrested before they could put plan into action; security officials seize bomb and submachine gun
The Shin Bet security service announced Thursday that it had foiled a terror plot to bomb a Jerusalem bus late last year.
During November and December, Shin Bet agents and IDF soldiers arrested five operatives of a Ramallah-based terrorist cell, composed of Fatah and Hamas members, who planned to carry out the attack against the backdrop of the Gaza war.
Fatah is the political party of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Terror group Hamas is a rival movement that is the de facto ruler in Gaza but also has a strong presence in the West Bank.
The bust appeared to show cooperation among some members of the two groups, though they are generally bitter rivals.
During the operation, the Shin Bet confiscated an explosive device manufactured by the cell members, which they planned to detonate remotely, as well as a Carlo submachine gun, a makeshift automatic weapon manufactured by Palestinian terror groups.
The five arrested men were named as Ali Adel Abed al-Majid Shweiki, Ahmad Jasser Khalil al-Haj Ali, Mundhir Hassan Hamudeh Sheikh Qassem, Omar Aziz Subhi Subah and Bashir Yousef Mohammad Awad.
The security agency said some members of the terror cell carried out a number of failed shooting attacks against IDF forces over the past year, all of which ended without casualties.
Indictments were recently filed, charging the five men with membership in an illegal organization, shootings, preparatory actions to commit homicide, weapons possession, and attempting to manufacture weapons.
The revelation of the foiled plot came amid an ongoing counter-terrorism offensive in the northern West Bank.
The West Bank has seen a surge in violence since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip ignited the war there.
Since then, troops have arrested some 6,000 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,350 affiliated with Hamas. According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 900 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 48 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in Palestinian terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank, including some carried out by Israeli citizens. Another eight members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives during raids in the West Bank.
There has also been a significant uptick in settler violence against Palestinians since the start of the war.
