A Hamas plot to kill Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an event in Jerusalem has been foiled by Israeli security forces, it was revealed today.
Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office filed an indictment with the city’s district court this morning against two Arab Israeli residents of East Jerusalem who formed part of a Hamas cell.
According to the indictment, Hazem Ziad Amran Sandouqa, a 22-year-old resident of Jerusalem’s Old City, and Fahdi Daoud Muhammad Abu Qaian, a 19-year-old Bedouin Israeli from the Negev, planned, along with Hamas activist Ahmad Jamal Mousa Azzam, 24, to plant explosives in the Jerusalem Payis Arena at a time when Netanyahu would be scheduled to speak at the site.
The three planned to place the device beneath the stage on which Netanyahu was due to be present, but never set a final date for the operation. It added that the Hamas activist rented an apartment in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Abu Dis and purchased explosive materials both personally as well as through the help of Sandouqa.
The terrorists obtained chemicals weighing dozens of kilograms in order to assemble explosive devices, and transferred the material to Azzam. It was noted that Azzam had operated a makeshift laboratory in Abu Dis, which was being used to create the explosives necessary for bombing attacks.
According to the Shin Bet, once Azzam became a member of Hamas, he recruited other students from his university who assisted him in every aspect of the plot, from renting apartments to use as laboratories to purchasing the chemicals and materials necessary to create the explosives, as well as volunteering to act as suicide bombers in the planned attacks.
Azzam, from Qalqilya in the West Bank, was arrested last month after the Shin Bet uncovered a large Hamas terror cell that planned to carry out suicide bombings and other terror attacks in Israel.
The Shin Bet, alongside the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police, have arrested 25 Hamas operatives so far, the majority of them students of the al-Quds University in Abu Dis, who they suspect were preparing to attack Israeli targets, the internal security agency said in a statement. It said the cell was controlled by the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip.
