Palestinian Authority Foils ISIS Suicide Bombing Against Israelis: Media
The Palestinian Authority foiled a planned ISIS suicide bombing attack in Israel, Ynetnews reported on May 26th.
An anonymous senior source in the PA was cited, claiming that Ala’ Bashir, a 23-year-old teacher, from the West Bank city of Kalkilya was the suspected suicide bomber. She was arrested two weeks earlier by the PA authorities and has been kept in custody ever since.
She was arrested in a mosque in the village of Jainsafout, east of Kalkilya. Witnesses said 25 security officers raided the Othman Bin Affan mosque and arrested Bashir while she was teaching children the Quran.
The PA’s Preventive Security Service (PSS), whose members arrested Bashir, said she was taken into custody on the basis of information that “certain parties operating outside the national consensus, and which had contributed to the destabilization of surrounding Arab countries, had exploited her difficult psychological and social condition.”
Bashir was arrested in order to save her from this exploitation attempt, the PSS added. “She was arrested in accordance with the law, and her arrest has nothing to do with political affiliation.”
Bashir’s mother, Asmahan, said that the PA security forces first raided the family home in search of her daughter. “They stormed our home around 5:30 p.m. and identified themselves as members of the Preventive Security Service,” she said. “They said they had a warrant to search the house, but did not show it to me. They conducted a thorough search of the house and confiscated our computers. They asked about my daughter, and I told them she was teaching in the mosque.”
Immediately, there were calls online to release Bashir, since she was allegedly arrested for no reason.
لليوم الـ13 على التوالي يواصل وقائي السلطة في قلقيلية اختطاف المعلمة آلاء بشير من داخل مسجد عثمان بن عفان من قرية جينصافوط قضاء قلقيلية #كلنا_الاء_بشير pic.twitter.com/p1s8DIiioA
— المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام (@PalinfoAr) May 21, 2019
عدوان جبان! ماهو سبب الإعتقال؟ تعليم القرآن!!! أين حقوق الإنسان من هذا التعدي والإستقواء أم هو الكيل بمكيالين #كلنا_آلاء_بشير pic.twitter.com/vXtil54ETi
— Nahed Agaba (@NahedAgaba) May 19, 2019
According to Ynet’s PA source, Bashir joined ISIS after she was approached on the Telegram encrypted instant messaging app to set out on a suicide mission. After this initial encounter, she was in contact with ISIS operatives in Syria and the Gaza Strip, who sent her an online training booklet on how to make a bomb.
According to the PA, Ala’ Bashir had in the past expressed solidarity for Al Qaeda and the Salafist movement in the Gaza Strip. She allegedly had social problems and decided to end her life by committing the attack.
Reportedly, she had family connections to a ranking official in the PA’s intelligence forces.
Separately, the Jewish News Syndicate on May 21st, accused the PA of lying that it has financial issues due to Israel, and that it rather has them because it funds terrorists.
The Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch obtained figures from the Israeli Finance Ministry.
“In 2018, tax revenues amounted to an average of NIS 670 million [$185.3 million] per month,” said Maurice Hirsch, head of legal strategies at PMW. “So even after deducting the NIS 42 million, the tax revenues in February 2019 totaled more than NIS 686 million [$190 million], NIS 16 million [$4.4 million] more than the monthly average in 2018.”
“It is now being argued,” said Hirsch, “that the P.A. is in danger of economic collapse only because of Israel’s implementation of the law to deduct from the tax revenues. This claim is baseless. The P.A.’s financial crisis is not the result of the deduction of the funds by the Israeli government. The financial crisis is a direct result of the decision of the P.A. to insist not only to continue to encourage terror and reward terrorists, but also to demand that the State of Israel be a partner to this pugnacious policy and allow the P.A. to make the payments out of the tax revenues that Israel collects and transfers to it.”
Notwithstanding, the case of the suspected planned ISIS suicide attack was not the first time the PA foiled an attack on Israelis. This has happened several times in the past year.
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