Hamas in Gaza and Turkey and Hezbollah in Lebanon are working around the clock to attack Israelis in Judea and Samaria, the head of Shin Bet said.
By: United with Israel Staff and JNS
The Shin Bet (Israel’s Security Agency) has prevented more than 1,000 terror attacks in the past year, according to a report by director Nadav Argaman to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“We’ve thwarted 480 terror attacks, arrested 219 Hamas cells and 590 lone attackers,” Argaman told the Committee on Tuesday.
Hamas in Gaza and Turkey and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been working around the clock to attempt to attack Israelis in Judea and Samaria, he said, adding that the “situation in the Palestinian arena has been very unstable in the past year.”
“In Judea and Samaria, the reality is very complex,” he noted. “We can discern a relative calm, but this quiet is deceptive. Underneath the surface, the area is bubbling” in the region.
The briefing took place as security forces thwarted yet another stabbing attack.
A Palestinian woman on Tuesday charged at a group of soldiers and civilians standing at the entrance to Kfar Adumim, an Israeli community located east of Jerusalem. The soldiers opened fire and stopped the terrorist, who was carrying a knife.
She sustained moderate injuries to her legs. No Israelis were wounded.
This attack occurred just a day after a Palestinian terrorist attempted to stab Israelis at the entrance to the Israeli community of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. IDF forces stationed in the area shot and wounded the terrorist, preventing an attack.
These incidents occurred amid a spate of Palestinian attacks in recent weeks, the most severe of which was carried out on October 7, when a terrorist shot and killed two Israelis at the Barkan Industrial Park in Samaria. The assailant remains at large.
However, in total, Judea and Samaria has seen a decrease in attacks in 2018, with 25 incidents compared with 54 in 2017 and 108 in 2016, the Shin Bet said.