Yasmin Jabar, a resident of Jerusalem’s Old City, was sentenced by the Jerusalem District Court to 30 months in prison on Sunday as part of a plea bargain conviction for spying for Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force.
Until her arrest in August 2020, she had been employed by the National Library at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Her relatively light sentence stemmed from the fact that she cut a deal and that she was caught before she had succeeded in causing significant security damage to Israel.
Since she was arrested on August 4, 2020, she could be released as early as February 2023 or possibly even earlier for good behavior.
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Israel Police and other branches of the security apparatus announced in September 2020 how they uncovered Hezbollah’s recruitment of Jabar.
Hezbollah organizes conventions for young Palestinians in Lebanon, Turkey and other countries as a way of cultivating recruits from Israel and the West Bank, the security organizations said. Hezbollah seeks to form cells to help with intelligence collection and terrorist attacks, they said.
Jabar was identified by Hezbollah operatives when she attended a conference from early to mid-December 2015. She was also given a code name to disguise her identity.
During travels to Lebanon, operatives from the joint Hezbollah and IRGC Quds Force unit introduced Jabar to senior operatives named Ataiya Abu Samhadna and Mah Moud Mousa, who were known to have been involved in recruitment in Israel for terrorist activities.
The connection between Jabar and Samhadna even became romantic, including visits to Samhadna’s family’s home.
Jabar also met with three other senior operatives, but two men never provided her with their names, and one woman provided a likely false name.
After being recruited, Jabar maintained contact with Hezbollah and IRGC operatives through coded messages on social-media platforms and met with operatives in Turkey around February 18, 2016 and in 2018.
The operatives wanted Jabar to move to Turkey and to return there in April 2019, but she did not go after she became increasingly anxious about being caught.
At those meetings, Jabar was instructed to recruit more operatives who would form a terrorist cell under her leadership. She was told to concentrate on recruiting women because they have more freedom of movement.
In September 2020, law enforcement said that some acquaintances of Jabar from Jerusalem and Ramallah were also detained, including a Turkish resident of Ramallah who was found to be one of Jabar’s handlers in the terrorism unit.
Questioned about how the case turned out against this handler, the Justice Ministry had not provided an answer by press time.
The summer 2020 investigation exposed how the terrorism unit operates, including its use of coded messages on social-media platforms, hosting conferences around the world for recruitment purposes and the use of assumed names by operatives to avoid being associated with Hezbollah while recruiting.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.