Report: Arab Israelis Charged with Smuggling Hizbullah Explosives
An Israeli court charged on Wednesday several Israeli-Arab residents of Nazareth and Ghajar for allegedly helping Hizbullah transfer explosives to Israel, the Jerusalem post reported.
The Nazareth District Court charged the men with assisting in the infiltration of the 20 kilograms of C4 explosives on June 5, it said.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said however 14 Israeli Arabs were arrested over the past few weeks in connection with the case.
The arrests followed a months-long undercover operation.
The Shin Bet said most of the suspects are drug dealers and presumed the packages they were asked to transfer were drugs.
The court heard that each kilogram was wrapped separately and could have been used to assemble a separate bomb, said The Jerusalem Post.
"The explosives could have been used against any type of target inside Israel," a senior Shin Bet internal security service official told the daily.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg of Hizbullah's efforts against Israel...the attempted attack here and the recent attack in Bulgaria are all carried out by the same organization."
Five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed in a suicide bombing at a Black Sea resort in July. Israel has blamed Iran and Hizbullah.
The Shin Bet official said that the alleged plan to carry out attacks in Israel would have needed approval from the top Hizbullah echelon, including Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
The official said that it was possible that Hizbullah was working with other people to “recruit terrorists” who would then be used to carry out the attacks.
So far, the Shin Bet has not arrested anyone who was supposed to carry out the actual attacks, said The Jerusalem Post.
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