Picture of explosives seized by Shin Bet 370.
(photo credit: Courtesy Shin Bet)
A series of Hezbollah terror attacks inside Israel were foiled recently
by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) after a group of Israeli-Arabs
helped smuggle 20 kilograms of high-grade explosives into Israel.
On
Wednesday, eight residents of Nazareth and the town of Ghajar - half of
which is in Israel and the other half in Lebanon - were charged in the
Nazareth District Court with assisting in the infiltration of the
explosives.
The
20 kg of C-4 explosives - each kilogram was wrapped separately and
could have been used to assemble a separate bomb - were smuggled into
Israel in a single bag by a number of residents of Ghajar on June 5.
The
bag was transferred a few days later to a resident of Nazareth, Abed
Zoabi - another known drug dealer - who hid the bag in his backyard
where it was captured by the Israel Police in mid July.
"The
explosives could have been used against any type of target inside
Israel," a senior Shin Bet official said on Wednesday. "This is just the
tip of the iceberg of Hezbollah's efforts against Israel...the
attempted attack here and the recent attack in Bulgaria are all carried
out by the same organization."
The Shin Bet official said that
such an operation - to infiltrate explosives into Israel from Lebanon -
would have needed approval from the top Hezbollah echelon, including
likely from the organization's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
The
official said that it was possible that Hezbollah 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.
Zoabi, according to the
Shin Bet, was in touch with a Lebanese drug dealer named George Nimer
who has ties with Hezbollah and instructed Zoabi to hold on to the bag
of explosives. Nimer told Zoabi that someone would contact him in the
near future to collect it.
The Shin Bet said that there was concrete intelligence linking Nimer to Hezbollah and specific operatives in the organization.
Zoabi
and Nimer spoke by cellphone after two of Zoabi's friends helped
smuggle Israeli SIM cards to Jordan where they were then transferred to
Lebanon.
One of the suspected drug dealers arrested in Ghajar,
Shahid Ibrahim, received the bag and hid it for a short time in a field
he owns near the village. Ibrahim's brother-in-law is Said Kahamuz, an
Israeli citizen and former resident of Ghajar who fled to Lebanon in
2006 as he stood trial for drug smuggling into Israel.