JERUSALEM: Israel charged eight Arabs yesterday with smuggling in explosives from Lebanon on behalf of Hezbollah guerrillas for the purpose of attacks in the Jewish state, the Justice Ministry said.
Israel fought an inconclusive 2006 border war with Iranian-backed Hezbollah and tensions have risen again lately amid fears of a wider conflict should the Israelis make good on threats to bomb Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim movement that dominates south Lebanon near the frontier with northern Israel, has also sworn to avenge the 2008 assassination in Syria of its military commander, Imad Moughniyeh, which it blamed on the Jewish state.
Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency said in a statement that 20 kg (45 pounds) of explosives and detonators were brought across the Lebanese border into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in early June by the suspects, most of whom believed the contraband they were handling was drugs. Shin Bet said the eight Arabs were arrested in July in Ghajar, a Golan town on the border with Lebanon, and in Nazareth, an Arab town in northern Israel. It did not say whether anyone was arrested for organizing the alleged plot.
A lawyer representing some of the eight Arabs said on Israeli army radio that they denied the charges.
Some of the suspects are Israeli citizens and others are from Ghajar, whose residents feel loyalty to Syria — from which Israel captured the Golan in a 1967 war — but have Israeli identity cards and can travel freely in the Jewish state.
The Justice Ministry listed a number of charges the Arab suspects faced, including aiding an enemy in war, having contact with foreign agents and several drug-related offenses.
Israel charges 8 Arabs over Hezbollah arms smuggling
