Israel foils Hamas abduction plan

Operative infiltrated Israel 5 weeks ago with intent of luring soldiers to the border and sedating them.

By YAAKOV KATZ
nitzana border 224.88 (photo credit: GPO [file])
nitzana border 224.88
(photo credit: GPO [file])
Hamas is breaching its agreement to uphold a cease-fire with Israel, senior defense officials said Sunday after the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed that it had foiled a Hamas plan to abduct soldiers and smuggle them into the Gaza Strip. On September 21, security forces arrested Jamal Abu Duabeh from the southern Gaza town of Rafah after he tried infiltrating Israel via the Egyptian border. During his interrogation, Abu Duabeh, 21, revealed that he had crossed into Egypt through a tunnel under the Philadelphi Corridor and spent several weeks in the Sinai Desert, where he began plotting the infiltration and the abduction attack. Abu Duabeh told the Shin Bet that senior Hamas operatives had financed the operation and that during his stay in the Sinai, he had been in continuous and direct contact with them. According to the plan, Abu Duabeh was to have lured IDF soldiers to the Egyptian border with an offer to take part in a drug deal. There he was to sedate them and cross into Egypt, then into the Gaza Strip. The plan was to be carried out with the help of a second man waiting in Egypt. Abu Duabeh was caught with sleeping pills, which he said were to be used to drug the soldiers. Abu Duabeh told his interrogators that he had planned to use connections with Israeli criminal elements, which he had forged after spending some time in Israel as an illegal worker, to lure the soldiers to the border.