Israel Matzav

Kidnap attempt on soldiers thwarted

I wonder how many more stories there are like this that we have not heard yet.

YNet is reporting that two members of the People's Resistance Committee were arrested on June 11 after crossing from Egypt into Israel in an attempt to kidnap soldiers. The soldiers were to be used - you guessed it - as bargaining chips for 'Palestinian' prisoners.

In their Shin Bet interrogation, the two said that they were sent by Jamal Abu Samhadana, the head of the PRC, who was killed in a targeted strike by Israel three days earlier.

According to YNet, the arrestees were named as Ibrahim Jamal Mahmed Magdoub and Muhammad Ali Omar Atzar. They admitted in their interrogation that the intended to kidnap soldiers to exchange for prisoners, and to carry out a "sacrifice" (i.e. suicide) shooting attack at Israelis.

But what's key here are the details of the intended attacks:

Magdoub admitted that he tried to enter Israel in order to lead Atzar to an attack. At the same time, he planned to kidnap a soldier to trade for a Palestinian prisoner, a negotiations process to have been led by the head of the Popular Resistance Committees Abu Samhadana, recently killed by the IDF.

Magdoub said in his investigation that he met Samhadana three weeks before setting out for Egypt. Samhadana told him that he was being sent to kidnap and murder soldiers in the Tel Aviv area, where Magdoub worked in the past, with the assistance of other organization members from Gaza, who were supposed to link up with him in Israel.

...

Samhadana ordered Atzar to bury the soldiers after the kidnapping in orchards in the Rishon Letzion area, and instructed him to transfer information about the soldiers via fax or a messenger in order to take responsibility and to carry out negotiations for trading prisoners.

In other words, all of the 'negotiations' to release the soldiers were false. While I hope that this is not the fate that has befallen Gilad Shalit, I fear more and more with each passing day that it is. It's been a week today since Shalit was captured, and Israel has no proof that he is still alive.

There's more too. There was also going to be a splodeydope. Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:11 PM