Israel charges five Palestinians

Israel has charged five Palestinians who it says were being recruited and funded by powerful Lebanese faction Hezbollah to monitor Israel’s military activity and carry out a suicide attack, police said today.

The terror cell was directed to plan suicide bombing attacks and to gather intelligence on IDF training camps, said the ISA statement.

Charges were filed against five Palestinian men from the Tulkarm area, the Shin Bet security service said in a statement on Wednesday.

Though they have seldom exchanged fire since their 2006 war in Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel are locked in a covert conflict, with the guerrillas blaming Israeli air strikes for the killing of two of their commanders in Syria a year ago.

Jawad Nasrallah was said to have recruited cell leader Tulkarm resident Mahmoud Zalul, and instructed the group to carry out shooting attacks as well as suicide attacks and to collect intelligence on Israeli security positions in the area. The organization is trying to ride the wave of terror in Israel and is working hard to fan the flames of incitement.

Hezbollah allegedly also sent the group $5,000 to help them plan their operation, the police said.

But even as the violence with Palestinians dominates the headlines, the Israeli military remains sharply focused on Hizbollah. More money would be channelled to Hezbollah with sanctions lifted and as Iran’s economy grows, Eizenkot said.

File picture shows Hezbollah members reacting while Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah talks on a screen during a televised speech at a festival celebrating Resistance and Liberation Day, in Nabatiyeh.

In a departure from the official Palestinian reticence on these ties, one of Abbas’s senior security chiefs, Major General Majid Faraj, was quoted by the USA journal Defense News on Wednesday as saying Palestinian forces had foiled 200 attacks on Israelis and arrested around 100 Palestinians since October.