Pesach Terror Attack Narrowly Avoided

Jerusalem, Israel — Recent interrogations of arrested members of Hamas in the West Bank town of Qalqilya produced information that the Islamic organization there was planning imminent terrorist attacks against Israel, including one using a large truck bomb, the Israeli Shin Bet internal security service said Tuesday.

Hamas, which is now the dominant faction in the Palestinian government, has not conducted suicide attacks within Israel since 2004 and has been committed to an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip since November. People who usually speak for Hamas would not react to the Shin Bet report on Tuesday, apparently in an attempt to not lend the allegations any credence.

Some observers have pointed to a growing split within Hamas between those in the government who are seeking international recognition and want to refrain from attacking Israel and more hard-line members.

Hamas has denied that such a division exists.

According to a rare public statement by Shin Bet, its agents found out about what they said were plans for suicide attacks from Qalqilya after interrogating detainees and learning of the truck bomb. Shin Bet said it was told that a would-be suicide bomber had driven a truck packed with about 220 pounds of explosives to the Tel Aviv area in March, but for unspecified reasons, the attack was not carried out. The truck returned to Qalqilya, and later blew up there in what Shin Bet termed a “work accident.”

Shin Bet said that 19 members of the Hamas network in Qalqilya were arrested in March, which it said thwarted plans to carry out attacks during the recent Passover holiday. The statement went on to warn that Hamas operatives in Qalqilya “continue to work on the planning and execution of significant attacks, including ones in the immediate future.”

The truck bomb was many times larger than bombs that have been used to explode Israeli buses.

In the wake of the Shin Bet statement, David Baker, an official in the office of Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Hamas “continues to target Israeli civilians.

“Terrorism is a cornerstone of the new Palestinian government, a government that should be shunned,” he said.

In March, Hamas joined with the more mainstream Fatah faction in a unity government.

Israel maintains a complete boycott of the government, and has been calling on the international community to do the same, with limited success. The United States and Europe are maintaining contacts with the non-Hamas ministers, and a senior British diplomat met with Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas last week on what was described as a humanitarian mission to help secure the release of a British journalist kidnapped in Gaza.

Hamas was at the vanguard of Palestinian suicide bombing campaigns in Israel, starting in the 1990s. But all recent suicide bombings in Israel have been carried out by the smaller, more extreme Islamic Jihad group, according to Israeli security officials.

The Palestinian unity government guidelines refer to the Palestinians’ “legitimate right” to resistance “in all its forms,” but also speak of extending the cease-fire from Gaza to the West Bank.

There have long been differences between the more pragmatic political leaders of Hamas, who now sit in government, and the military underground that is believed to answer to more hard-line leaders in exile.

A senior Israeli Army commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recently that in Israel’s assessment, Hamas had not changed its policy regarding attacks in Israel, but that there were “some groups in the military wing of Hamas that don’t like the cease-fire or the unity government.”

On March 19, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military underground of Hamas, claimed responsibility for the shooting and wounding of an Israeli Electric Corporation employee who was working inside Israel near the Gaza border fence. That was the first attack of any kind claimed by Hamas since November.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, denied any divisions in Hamas over the unity government and dismissed such talk as “Israeli propaganda aimed at trying to bring about Hamas’s collapse.”

A Hamas-orchestrated suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya on the eve of Passover in 2002 killed 30, and precipitated Israel’s reinvasion of the Palestinian cities of the West Bank. Shortly afterward, the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of the West Bank security barrier, following intense public pressure to find a way of keeping suicide bombers out.

The driver of the explosive-laden truck sent recently to Tel Aviv was able to pass through a gate in the barrier, exploiting the fact that he holds an Israeli identification card because his father is married to an Israeli citizen, Shin Bet said. The truck also had Israeli license plates, the statement said. It did not indicate who the driver was or what had happened to him.

According to Israeli military officials, the Hamas infrastructure is particularly developed in Qalqilya, where Hamas won all the seats in local council elections in 2005.