Israel’s security agencies thwarted an ISIS-inspired terrorist bombing targeting Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the northern city of Acre, the Israel Police and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed on Tuesday.
The agencies said 18-year-old Acre resident Issa Mahdi, an Israeli citizen who supported Islamic State (ISIS) and maintained contact with operatives abroad, was arrested in recent weeks in connection with the plot. He was set to be indicted on Tuesday.
According to the police investigation, Mahdi intended to carry out the attack at a bus stop near the city’s train station on behalf of the terror organization, and had already taken steps to produce explosives. He allegedly also attempted to obstruct justice when he was arrested.
Since the outbreak of the war with Hamas triggered by the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, the two security agencies said the threat posed by ISIS and its supporters in Israel has grown, along with a worrying trend of Israeli Arab involvement in terrorism.
In 2025 alone, the ISA has arrested 42 Arab-Israeli citizens on suspicion of supporting ISIS, thwarting multiple attacks.
A poll conducted in 2023 by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions found that one third of Arab citizens disagreed with the statement that Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre “does not reflect Arab society, the Palestinian people and the Islamic nation.”
A June 2024 survey found that around 14.7% of Arab Israelis believe that Hamas should govern the Gaza Strip after the war. That represents approximately 308,700 Israeli citizens out of an Arab Israeli population of around 2.1 million.
