Three Palestinians suspected of planning to carry out a
series of massive terror attacks against Israeli civilians were killed Tuesday
during a joint Shin Bet and IDF operation in the West Bank town of Yatta, south
of Hebron, the army said.
Two of the suspects, whom the army said were members of a
“Salafist jihadi” group, were shot dead in their car after they refused to
surrender themselves to security forces.
They were carrying “explosive devices
and 2 handguns,” the army said in a statement. A third man was killed in a gun
battle “following a hot pursuit,” IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said.
No Israeli soldiers were injured in the incident.
The IDF said the organization to which the two belonged had
over the past months attempted to set up an extensive military infrastructure
across the West Bank.
The organization had planned to target Palestinian
Authority structures and personnel, in addition to Israeli soldiers and
settlers, the statement said.
The operatives had allegedly prepared hideout apartments,
bought weapons, and produced explosives.
Israeli security forces learned of the planned attack after
arresting several of the organization’s members near Nablus and the West Bank
settlement of Yatir over the past few weeks.
“This terrorist network is just a sample of those who try to
harm Israeli civilians and undermine the existing security stability,” Lerner
said.
“Operational access combined with quality intelligence gives
us the upper hand on these evildoers and their beastly intentions,” he added.
“It is our obligation to prevent them from fulfilling their detestable
fantasies.”
Israeli defense officials and analysts have warned in recent
weeks that the West Bank may be heading for another violent uprising, citing a
rise in the number of rock-throwing and Molotov cocktail attacks.
Earlier this month, a couple driving along a road in the
West Bank near the settlement of Tekoa were hurt after their car was attacked
with a Molotov cocktail.
A day earlier, a Palestinian man was killed at a checkpoint
in Abu Dis near Jerusalem after he tried to stab a Border Police guard, Army
Radio reported, and another Palestinian man was shot to death at Tapuah
Junction, near the West Bank city of Ariel, when he fired a flare gun toward
Israelis at a hitchhiking post.
The recent rise in violence was not confined to the West
Bank, as terror attacks crossed over the Green Line and into major Israeli
cities.
In mid-November, a Palestinian teenager stabbed 19-year-old
soldier Eden Atias multiple times in the neck on a bus at the central bus
station in Afula.
The assailant, 16-year-old Hussein Rawarda, had entered
Israel illegally in search of work and apparently decided to carry out the
deadly attack after failing to be hired by an Israeli employer.
Slightly before the attack, former Shin Bet chief Yuval
Diskin said the Palestinians were ripe for a Third Intifada. However, Defense
Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that recent attacks were isolated incidents,
insisting that “there is no sign of a popular uprising or so-called Third
Intifada.”
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