Thursday, August 22, 2002

Hamas Members Held in Recent Bombings
Israeli security officials announced today that they had rounded up a group of Arab residents of East Jerusalem belonging to Hamas and said they were responsible for a string of terror attacks over the last four months, including the bombing at Hebrew University on July 31 that killed nine people, including five Americans.

The arrests were announced at an unusual briefing for foreign correspondents by senior officials of the Shin Bet security service.

They were significant not only because of the seriousness of the attacks but because of the reported involvement of Arabs living in Jerusalem, whose identity cards entitle them to move and work freely throughout Israel. The Jerusalem Arabs have largely stayed on the sidelines in the current uprising.

Israel Radio reported that the deputy internal security minister, Gideon Ezra, was calling for the demolition of the homes of the arrested men — the punishment meted out to families of suicide bombers in the West Bank — and the revocation of their Israeli identity papers.

The Shin Bet officials said five members of the group were arrested on Saturday as they prepared to carry out another attack. Four were residents of Silwan, an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, and the fifth was from a village outside Ramallah in the West Bank.

Under interrogation, the prisoners divulged where they had concealed the bomb they were planning to detonate, and it was found and disarmed on Tuesday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/22/international/middleeast/22MIDE.html

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