Three residents of the northern Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm were arrested about three weeks ago on suspicion of involvement in planning a shooting attack on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the Shin Bet security service disclosed on Thursday.
Two of the three were indicted in Haifa District Court on Thursday for planning the attack after allegedly failing to join the ranks of Islamic State fighters in the civil war in Syria.
According to the indictment, the two are accused of attempting to replicate the Temple Mount attack in July, in which two assailants, also from Umm al-Fahm, killed two Israeli policemen at the site. The formal charges against Said Jabarin, who is in his 20s, and a 16-year-old whose name cannot be reported because he is a minor include conspiring to aid the enemy in wartime, contact with a foreign agent and weapons offenses.
The indictment alleges that the two identified with ISIS’ ideology and separately began seeking out information about the group on the internet. Jabarin was questioned by the Shin Bet in January in this regard. In May he was questioned again and signed a commitment that he would put an end to his activity.
But the two allegedly decided to go to Syria and join the ranks of ISIS forces fighting in the civil war there. The juvenile defendant is said to have made contact on Facebook with an individual who identified himself as an Islamic State member who said it was not possible at the time to enter Syria. It was at that time that they decided to plan the Temple Mount attack, according to the indictment, in an effort to kill Israeli security forces and non-Muslims before committing suicide as Islamic State martyrs.
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In its request to have the defendants held in custody until the end of the legal proceedings, the prosecution said the pair admitted to contacting an ISIS representative and of planning the Temple Mount attack.
The third person detained earlier this month, Sa’ad Mahajana, is suspected of weapons possession. Security authorities confiscated two guns and a sub-machine gun that was allegedly to be used in the planned attack. The Shin Bet and police have also arrested others in the Umm al-Fahm area on suspicion of trading in weapons.
The attack in July on the Temple Mount in which the two policemen were killed was followed by considerable unrest in Jerusalem. A particular matter of contention was the decision by Israeli authorities to step up security on the mount through the installation of metal detectors. Israeli authorities eventually removed the metal detectors.
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