Six West Bank Palestinians Arrested Over Alleged Rocket-Building Plot Against Israel

Six Palestinians from the Jenin area in the northern West Bank have been arrested on suspicion of attempting to build rockets for launching at Israel, the Shin Bet security agency and Israel Police announced on Tuesday.

According to a joint statement, the investigation uncovered a terror network that had manufactured a rocket and explosive devices and had carried out at least three launch tests.

“The investigation also revealed that the cell received information via a messaging app concerning materials required to manufacture explosives, from an outside source who was in contact with the main suspect in the affair,” the Shin Bet and police said.

The main suspect confessed to establishing the cell and identified the other members, the statement said. He claimed the rocket tests had produced successful results in power and range, and that after each test the cell made improvements ahead of the next one. Another suspect admitted to helping the group obtain explosives.

Forces seized several weapons, including an assault rifle and an RPG, along with what the statement described as “written materials containing information and instructions for manufacturing explosives, rockets and explosive devices intended for use against the State of Israel and security forces.” Prosecutors were expected to file indictments against the six in the coming days.

In recent years, Palestinian terror groups have made several attempts to develop and launch crude rockets from the West Bank at Israeli settlements and at Israel, with little to no success.

In a separate matter on Tuesday, police said Border Police officers captured a wanted Palestinian and another suspect during a raid a day earlier in the village of Kafr Dan, near Jenin. The wanted man, described as affiliated with Fatah, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party, “acted to advance terror activity while maintaining ties with other individuals, and had been hiding from security forces for an extended period,” police said.

According to police, undercover officers surrounded a clothing store in Kafr Dan on Monday where the man was allegedly hiding and called on him to surrender. “After realizing that the building was surrounded, the wanted man exited with his hands raised and surrendered to the force, which arrested him at the scene,” police said. The store owner was also detained on suspicion of helping hide the wanted man.

Also on Tuesday, Palestinian media reported that extremist settlers set fire overnight to two vehicles and part of an unoccupied building in the South Hebron Hills, spraying Hebrew graffiti on the building that read: “Evictions = chaos.” Fires were also reported overnight at several vehicles in the village of Majdal Bani Fadil in the Nablus area. No injuries were reported in either incident. A day earlier, Israeli security forces arrested 18 settlers who rioted and attacked troops during the evacuation of an illegal outpost in the northern West Bank.

Settler violence against Palestinians has soared this year and spiked further in the weeks leading up to last week’s election, which ended inconclusively, with neither the coalition under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor the bloc seeking to oust him having a clear path to forming a new government. Israel has faced growing international criticism over the surge, which Netanyahu has downplayed as the work of a small number of delinquents from outside the West Bank. Critics accuse the government of condoning and even encouraging the violence, which has displaced dozens of Palestinian families, while the IDF faces mounting criticism over troops standing by during attacks, actively participating, or failing to prosecute those responsible.