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Members of an ISIS cell active in Israel and suspected of planning a terror attack have been taken into custody, the police announced on Wednesday.
The Israel Security Agency (ISA), the internal security and counterintelligence service, ordered the weeks-long action to find and apprehend the terrorists.
The elite Yamas Border Police officers from the Jerusalem District, together with IDF forces, participated in the operation against the radicals accused of “advancing terror activity.”
Soldiers from the Lions of the Jordan Valley Battalion nabbed three members of the cell in Jericho last week, while the Yamas Border Police officers arrested another in the same city this week.
The police said suspects have been transferred to the ISA for further investigation, adding that security forces will continue proactive counterterrorism missions to protect the public.
In another operation, Border Police officers of the Northern District Central Investigations Unit raided a compound in the community of Had Nes in the Golan Heights.
They located a senior member of the Abu Latif crime organization who had been hiding since the launch of an investigation involving the state’s witness known as “the Prince.”
During the arrest of Bashar Mahoul, 43, a resident of Peki’in, a search of the apartment led to the seizure of a copy of the indictment from the “Prince” case.
The police said the discovery indicated the suspect continued to closely monitor the legal proceedings against members of the organization while he was underground.
Upon completion of interrogation, the State Attorney’s Office will file an indictment against Mahoul at the District Court in Haifa for a series of offenses, including extortion by threats.
The arrest followed the recent filing of indictments against 17 defendants from the Abu Latif and Hariri cartels, two of the most powerful and dangerous crime organizations in Israel.
Israel, today, laid to rest the last hostage from Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the funeral that the country’s enemies would pay a heavy price for any future aggression.
Netanyahu’s threat came as Hamas told AFP it was prepared to carry out a full transfer of governance in Gaza to a 15-member Palestinian technocratic committee established under a US-backed ceasefire plan.
Hundreds of tearful mourners packed a stadium in southern Israel on Wednesday for the funeral of Ran Gvili, the last Gaza hostage whose burial marked the end of a painful national saga triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack.
Israeli forces on Monday brought home the remains of Gvili, who was killed in action and whose body Palestinian militants took into Gaza during their attack.
A large banner bearing Gvili’s portrait hung inside a stadium in Meitar, the hometown of the 24-year-old police officer, where crowds gathered for his funeral before he was laid to rest.
In front of the sombre crowd, which included tearful family members, Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, Gvili’s coffin lay draped in an Israeli flag.
“I hoped you would come back on your own two feet, and that gave me strength,” said his mother Talik Gvili in her eulogy, describing her son as “the first to leave, last to return”.
“For two years and four months, we talked about you constantly, and you became everyone’s child,” she added.
“Rani, you are with me all the time.”
Herzog hailed the return of his remains but said he could only regret not having known Gvili while he was alive.
“Gvili family, I ask you, as president, for forgiveness that we were not there for him… an entire nation mourns with you today,” he said during the ceremony.
An officer in the elite Yassam unit, Gvili was on medical leave ahead of shoulder surgery when Hamas launched its deadly attack in southern Israel, but grabbed his gun and raced towards the area.
