The Shin Bet security agency said on Wednesday that Israel is revoking entry permits to Israel from 230 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, relatives of Hamas members who allegedly worked to recruit West Bank Palestinians to help carry out attacks. did.
In a statement, the Shin Bet said that in recent weeks dozens of Palestinians from the West Bank had been arrested and interrogated over their alleged links with Hamas operatives in Gaza. The agency said many of the youth suspects were unaware that Hamas was using them to prepare attacks against Israeli targets.
According to the Shin Bet, Hamas operatives disguised their true identities as companies and other organizations while recruiting West Bank Palestinians for paid work.
Palestinians in the West Bank would be tasked with transferring money to purchase weapons or delivering packages of arms and ammunition to Hamas operatives.
The Shin Bet said, “All of this is without the couriers being aware, in most cases, that they are transferring weapons or are involved in terrorist activities.”
The agency says the operation was led by 45-year-old Farah Hamed, a Hamas member from the West Bank town of Silwad who was deported to Gaza under the 2011 Shalit deal.
Farah Hamed, a Hamas member from the West Bank city of Silwad who was deported to the Gaza Strip as part of the 2011 Shalit deal, was accused of directing attacks in the West Bank on January 25, 2023. (Shin Bet)
The Shin Bet said Hamed was a member of the Gaza-based terror group’s so-called “West Bank Headquarters”, a unit involved in carrying out terror attacks against Israel from the West Bank.
Several of the suspects have been convicted in a military court of various security offences, including illegal arms dealing.
The Shin Bet gave details of the cases of the two suspects.
Salam Ziyad, 27, of the Jalazon refugee camp, was contacted on Facebook in July by an account named Haled Taleb, offering work for a Turkish courier company operating in the West Bank.
Ziyad had previously been tasked with transferring thousands of dollars between different areas in the West Bank without knowing their intended use.
The Shin Bet said that the Haled Taleb account then presented himself as a man who works for Mohammad Dahlan, a senior politician in the Palestinian Authority, and instructed Ziad to buy several firearms.
According to the statement, Ziyad bought three assault rifles, two handguns and ammunition with the help of his cousin Ahmed Ziyad, who was also from Jalazon and was tasked with delivering them to a Hamas operative in Huwara.
Masked Palestinian gunmen open fire during clashes with Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Nablus on December 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
The weapons were given to brothers Mohammad and Mahmood Ghazi, who were accused of Firing on Israeli vehicles on Route 60 Highwaynear Huwara on September 9, 2022.
The second suspect detained by Shin Bet, Mohammad Yazen Jaber, 21, from E-Ram in East Jerusalem, responded to an ad on Facebook seeking workers for a restaurant. Jaber was contacted by an account named Abu Ala, who said he was looking for a deliveryman to move packages of perfume to the West Bank.
In August, Abu Ala instructed Jaber to purchase and deliver assault rifles and handguns to two Hamas operatives in the West Bank, both of whom were also arrested.
“Shin Bet’s investigation revealed that some of the money went through digital currency traders to recruits who were also defrauded by Hamas members,” the agency said.
Salam Ziad (left) and Mohammed Jaber (right), accused of delivering money and weapons to Hamas operatives in the West Bank on January 25, 2023. (Shin Bet)
In response to attempts by Hamas operatives to set up the attacks, Israel revoked entry permits to Israel from 230 of their relatives.
“The actions of Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip will reduce the number of entry permits for workers from Gaza into Israel,” said a senior security official.
The service warned that the Gaza-based terrorist group was trying to carry out attacks in the West Bank and Israel.
The arrests come at a time of rising violence in the West Bank, with the IDF pressing into 2022 with an anti-terrorist offensive to deal with a series of attacks that killed 31 people in Israel.
The IDF’s operation has made more than 2,500 arrests in almost nightly raids. It also killed 171 Palestinians in 2022, and another 19 since the beginning of the year, many of them in carrying out attacks or during clashes with security forces, though some were unconcerned civilians.
