COUNTER-TERRORISM, JANUARY-MARCH 2005

There were 405 terrorist attacks in January 2005, 116 in February and 126 in March; the firing of mortars and rockets, as well as incidents involving small arms fire, declined sharply. No Israeli was murdered as a result of terrorist activity in March. The number of wounded also declined sharply in the first three months of the year: 54 in January, 60 in February and 11 in March. It should be pointed out that all of February’s fatalities and most of its wounded were as a result of the 25.2.05 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv (). _____ On 17.3.05, Ashraf Hamdi Kamal Dahiya, born in 1976, a resident of the Old City of Jerusalem, was detained for questioning by the ISA (his father and brother, who live in Gaza, are members of Hamas). Dahiya admitted that while he visited with his family in Gaza during the 2003-2004 winter, his brother proposed that he join Hamas. After agreeing, Dahiya was taken to a Hamas safe house in Gaza where he was introduced to several senior Hamas terrorists who instructed him on how to prepare bombs and to establish a Hamas cell in Jerusalem following his return to the city. He was told to rent an apartment in Jerusalem, recruit additional terrorists and purchase a computer in order to communicate with, and receive additional instructions from, Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Upon returning to Jerusalem Dahiya asked his relative, Ahmed Said Muhammad Dahiya, to join Hamas and serve as a suicide bomber. The latter hesitated and then revealed the former’s Hamas affiliation to their family members, thus leading to a long hiatus in activity. Several months later Gaza-based Hamas terrorists reactivated their link with Ashraf Dahiya and asked him to travel to Gaza in order to undergo further training. His 17.2.05 arrest cut this short; Ahmed Dahiya was also arrested. It should be noted that the Gaza-based Hamas terrorists did not to hesitate to exploit the relative ease in which humanitarian visits to Gaza by residents of eastern Jerusalem are approved. _____ Yusuf George Daoud Kila, 27, a PFLP terrorist from Bir Zeit, was arrested on 11.2.05 during a joint IDF-ISA operation in the wake of the arrests of PFLP terrorist Ubay Fahmi Basil Aboudi and Nadel Muhammad Yusuf Abu Alma on 20.1.05 and 9.1.05, respectively. Kila admitted that the three, under the guidance of senior PFLP terrorist Bashar Latif Aref Hanani, had planned to perpetrate a terrorist attack at the IDF Armored Corps Museum at Latrun, using two suicide terrorists and a car bomb. Kila proposed the site, based on his knowledge of the area due to his having worked adjacent to a nearby monastery in 2000-2001. Abu Alma admitted that he was to have booby-trapped a car and detonate it with Kila’s assistance. Hanani admitted to having been responsible for recruiting two suicide bombers and obtaining the bombs. Ubay was to have transported the would-be suicide bombers. The cell members also admitted to planning to perpetrate a shooting attack against an IDF jeep on the Ramallah bypass road, seize the soldiers’ weapons and abduct the bodies, which were to have been hidden in abandoned buildings in Bir Zeit. The cell members admitted that their goal was to perpetrate a major terrorist attack in order to disrupt, and possibly cause the failure of, the Palestinian Authority elections. (Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Office) BPI-info