A Jordanian citizen who was enlisted by Hamas operatives in Syria to carry out a terror attack in Israel is under arrest for allegedly planning to kidnap an Israeli in Jerusalem, police said Wednesday. The suspect, Ala Hamad, 29, was apprehended in November 2006 in a joint Shin Bet security service-police sting operation. A court gag order which was imposed on the case was lifted Wednesday afternoon. According to police, Hamad, whose mother is Israeli and whose father is Jordanian, was recruited by Hamas operatives in Syria during a visit to Damascus in 2004 to carry out a terror attack in Jerusalem. Last year, Hamad settled down in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Tsur Bahir after undergoing training by his Hamas operatives, the police said. While in Jerusalem, he gathered intelligence information and potential targets for his planned attack, and contacted his Hamas operatives several times, police said. A search of his east Jerusalem home following his arrest uncovered materials used to make explosives.
Hamad told interrogators that he planned to carry out the kidnapping attack just two weeks after his arrest, the police said. His arrest also thwarted a second planned kidnapping attack in Jerusalem that was planned by Hamas, police said. He is expected to be tried in a military court.
News of the arrest came just one day after Israeli security officials announced that they had apprehended 12 members of a Palestinian terror cell which planned to kidnap American citizens in the West Bank and attack a Modi'in synagogue.