Israeli security forces seized a machine gun overlooking an Israel Defense Forces facility near Hebron in Judea and Samaria last week, the Israel Police said on Thursday.
The MG-34, which was developed in Germany in the 1930s and was a standard machine gun of Nazi Germany’s armed forces during World War II, had been positioned on a rooftop in a residential building, according to the statement. About 100 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition were also recovered.
The find was based on intelligence about a recent field trial of the weapon in question, police said.
“It was used in local conflicts [between Palestinians] and could be used to destabilize the security situation in the area,” according to the statement. Forensic tests are to be conducted on the weapon and bullets to locate suspects, it added.
In a separate raid in the village of Beit Ummar, security forces seized a Carlo-type submachine gun and arrested a Palestinian in his 30s, the statement continued.
Forces found a hunting rifle on Wednesday night during an operation in the village of Fasayil in the Jordan Valley, police said.
Also on Wednesday, security forces found 5.56mm ammunition, M16 rifle parts and a ceramic vest during a raid in Jerusalem’s Shuafat camp, where they apprehended an Arab-Israeli suspect in his 20s.
The operations aimed to “increase the security of the citizens of the State of Israel wherever they are, while offensively thwarting the involvement of these dangerous [weapons] in criminal or terrorist activity,” according to police.
Separately, Israel’s Channel 14 this week reported that police last month arrested a 24-year-old man from Qalansawe, an Arab-Israeli town near Netanya, on suspicion that he was involved in a weapons smuggling and human trafficking network with ties to Palestinian criminals in Judea and Samaria.
The man, Mohammed Abu Ras, was involved in a sting operation in which a police agent tricked arms dealers into selling him an M-16 rifle and a handgun before police arrested the sellers and raided the Qalansawe compound, where they also arrested Abu Ras, according to the report. Police found six Palestinians illegally staying in Israel during the raid.
Abu Ras had worked as an instructor for youths deemed at high risk of falling into a life of crime, according to the report. He had no criminal record. Police tracked him down thanks to a fingerprint he’d left on an undetonated explosive device found in Qalansawe. They matched that fingerprint with a photo of Abu Ras’s finger, which they had obtained from his cell phone after suspecting him of dealing in arms, according to the Channel 14 report.
