Israel’s security forces were once again successful in thwarting a Hamas plot against Israel. They remain vigilant to contend with a developing terror threat. 

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman.
(Photo: Yossi Zamir/Flash 90)

A Hamas plot to assassinate Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman was exposed and thwarted by Israel’s security forces.

A Shabak (Israel’s Security Agency) spokesman announced Thursday that the Shabak had arrested four Arabs in connection with a plot to assassinate Liberman. The would-be assassins planned to fire an RPG rocket at his cavalcade as he was on his way home through Gush Etzion.

The cell had reportedly conceived the idea during Operation Protective Edge and began to gather intelligence on Liberman’s movements, but had not yet obtained the weapon with which they intended to execute the attack.

The four arrested terrorists were identified as Yussuf Ibrahim Yussuf Alsheikh, 50, Adnan Mahmoud Sabih, 31, Ibrahim Salim Mahmoud Zir, 37, and his brother, Ziad Salim Mahmoud Zir, 35.

All members of the terror cell are from the Bethlehem area and are known Hamas activists. Some of them have served time in Israeli prisons. The four were indicted in a military court on charges of conspiring to commit murder and to acquire weapons.

Hamas Rebuilding its Terror Network

The Shabak’s investigation also uncovered a separate terrorist plot in which Hamas terrorists planned to run over Israelis and IDF soldiers with a vehicle in the Gush Etzion area.

The Shabak spokesman stressed that these terrorist plots are part of Hamas’s worrying attempts to rebuild its terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, which was heavily damaged by the IDF after the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers last summer. Furthermore, the terror organization continues to incite an escalation of the violence in Jerusalem and its environs on its official sites.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri claimed that the organization had no information regarding a plan to assassinate Liberman. However, Zuhri stressed that “the leaders of the ‘Israeli occupation’ are responsible for the death of children and women and the desecration of the holy places and are therefore legitimate targets for the resistance (i.e. terror activity).”

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Author: United with Israel Staff