JERUSALEM: Israel's Shin Bet domestic security agency said Monday, November 22, 2021, it had arrested dozens of Islamist Hamas members in the occupied West Bank who were preparing anti-Israeli attacks.
The announcement came a day after a Hamas operative carried out a shooting attack in Jerusalem's Old City that killed an Israeli and injured three others. The assailant was shot dead.
According to Shin Bet, the leadership of Hamas abroad, headed by Saleh Arouri, was behind the latest activity exposed, "aimed at carrying out attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as bombing attacks in Israel".
In recent weeks Shin Bet, army and police forces "arrested over 50 Hamas members in the West Bank who were involved in forming the terror network", the agency said in a statement. Money, weapons, guns and bomb-making material was also seized.
Islamist movement Hamas, considered by the European Union and United States a terror group, took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 and has ruled it since, while Israel has imposed a blockade on the territory.
Since then, Hamas and Israel have fought four wars, in 2008, 2012, 2014 and this year.
A senior Shin Bet official said the Hamas operatives were planning "a series of major attacks".
"The goal of the intensified terror activity of Hamas operatives abroad and in Gaza, through operatives in the Judea and Samaria, is to undermine stability in the area, while exacting a heavy price from local residents," the official said, using the biblical names for the West Bank.