Israel arrests terror cell in Samaria rocket plot

Israeli security forces on Friday arrested in Samaria a group of terrorists who had attempted to launch a rocket from the Ramallah area the previous week, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Fighters belonging to the IDF, Shin Bet and the Border Police’s Yamam National Counter-Terrorism Unit arrested three suspected terrorists in a raid on a building. In it, the troops found two launch-ready rockets, dozens of improvised explosive devices and explosives and other evidence linking the suspects to attempts to manufacture and launch rockets, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement.

The rockets had no warhead, the statement also said.

In commenting on this development, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that, “Despite its commitments, the Palestinian Authority is not fighting terrorism and continues its ‘Pay-for-Slay’ policy,” in which terrorists receive funding for perpetrating attacks on Israelis and Jews.

“This is further proof of the enormous danger in establishing a ‘Palestinian state’,” Sa’ar wrote on X. “If Israel will not maintain security control over Judea and Samaria, the entire State of Israel will be in danger.”

Several countries, including France, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, said they planned to recognize Palestinian statehood later in September, on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he was “not surprised” by the seizure. “I was almost alone in warning against the Conception in Gaza before Oct. 7,” Ben-Gvir wrote, referncing the belief that Hamas had no appetite for a major confrontation. “The same applies in Judea and Samaria,” he wrote on X. “The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist entity that’s training to carry out an Oct. 7 in Judea and Samaria, that pays salaries to those who murder Jews, that educates in its educational institutions to slaughter Jews, and incites in its media outlets in favor of terrorism. If we don’t dismantle it in time, we’ll wake up too late, just like in Gaza.”

In addition to the seizure of the weapons and suspected terrorists, a workshop for producing rockets was located in the Ramallah area. The rockets and explosives were dismantled and destroyed, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit also said.

The detainees, who have been taken for questioning by the Shin Bet security service, are suspected of trying to launch a rocket into Israel from Kfar Naama west of Ramallah last week. According to some testimonies, a projectile was launched westward during that incident, which ended without injury or damage. It is not clear how far from the launch site the projectile landed.

Queried by JNS on that incident, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said: “Following an examination of the device, it was determined that the rocket did not contain a warhead and lacked any standard explosive materials. The device is currently under investigation by Israel Border Police bomb disposal experts operating in the Judea and Samaria region, as part of a broader operational and intelligence-driven effort to identify and dismantle terror infrastructure in the area.”

The incident follows several attempts to launch rockets from Samaria and Judea into Israel, and replicate there the ballistic capabilities that Hamas had possessed before Oct. 7, 2023.

Over the past year, more than 1,000 illegal weapons have been seized in the area, and over 30 weapons-manufacturing workshops have been located and destroyed, a security official told JNS.