Following alert of terrorist infiltration from West Bank, police arrest suspect

After security forces conducted sweeps of Kfar Yona region near Netanya, suspect arrested in his car in Taibe.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Israeli Police (photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE)
Israeli Police
(photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE)
Security forces arrested a Palestinian man in the Sharon region on Tuesday following a general terrorism alert.
Police apprehended the suspect following two hours of manning roadblocks and searching hundreds of vehicles. Following the arrest, the alert was lifted.
The warning related to the possible infiltration of terrorists from the West Bank to the Kfar Yona area near Netanya.
Before the arrest, police, acting on information from the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), increased security in central Israel.
“We are asking the public to be on high alert and to report to the police on anything suspicious,” a senior police officer told Channel 2.
On July 28, Border Police officers stopped a vehicle that was set up as a car bomb and arrested its driver at a West Bank junction.
The Border Police said at the time that the man pulled up to a checkpoint near Betar Illit in Judea, arousing suspicions.
Officers asked the man, who was wearing a wig and large sunglasses and acting “in a strange manner,” to stop his car, but he refused.
One of the officers then reached inside to grab the car keys, subsequently the man stepped on the gas and started driving off, with the officer hanging out the window, according to the Border Police. The officer managed to pull his gun and cock it, ordering the driver to stop, after it came to a stop, the officer pulled the man out of the car and arrested him.
The driver was handed over to the Shin Bet for questioning. Inside his car they found pipe bombs, gas canisters, explosives and a detonator, the IDF said.
The officer who arrested the man said the back seats had been removed and the entire area was full of gas canisters rigged with electric wires.
On July 10, Defense Ministry security guards stopped a car with Palestinian plates containing two people and carrying a bomb on Route 5 at a checkpoint near the Sha’ar Shomron junction close to the town of Oranit, northeast of Tel Aviv.
The car was stopped after it “drew the suspicion of security guards,” according to police.
As in the incident on Sunday, the security guards found a gas canister that had been rigged as a bomb.
Both suspects were taken into the custody of the Shin Bet.
Ben Hartman and Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.