Raid in Bethlehem

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Last night, a team from the Israel Police’s elite Yamam counterterror unit raided Bethlehem and killed four Islamic Jihad gunmen. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said the four had constituted the leadership of the terrorist group’s armed wing in the city. When the men’s bodies were inspected, they were found to be carrying rifles and pistols.

Among the dead was Mahmoud Shehada, 45, (photo) the commander of Islamic Jihad in Bethlehem. He had been on Israel’s wanted list for eight years, since the eruption of the second intifada, for involvement in a number of deadly terror attacks. Another of the dead was Ahmad Balbul, 48, reported to have been a member of both Fatah’s Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the Bethlehem City Council.

The Shin Bet said Shehada had maintained direct contacts with Islamic Jihad headquarters in Syria and regularly received instructions from Damascus regarding attacks. His home was demolished by the IDF following last Thursday’s terrorist attack at the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem – in which eight students were killed – leading to speculation, dismissed by the Shin Bet on Wednesday, that he was involved in planning the attack.

The IDF said Shehada was responsible for a series of car bombings and suicide attacks in Jerusalem early this decade. In November 2000, he sent the car bomb that exploded near Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda market, killing two people, including Ayelet Hashahar Levy, 28, the daughter of then-National Religious Party chairman Yitzhak Levy, and 33-year-old Jerusalem lawyer Hanan Levy (no relation), and wounded 10 people.

Re-posted with permission from www.lekarev.org.