Arab Israelis Sultan Atallah (left) and Rami Shami, arrested by the Shin Bet after they were reportedly recruited by the Hezbollah terror group. (Shin Bet)
“This affair shows the efforts of Iranian and other terrorist elements to exploit the Arab and Druze citizens of Israel,” said a senior Shin Bet official.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
Israel’s Shin Bet security agency announced Sunday that it arrested two Arab-Israeli men, citizens of Israel, who were recruited as Hezbollah operatives to help plot a terror attack in Israel.
The arrest was the result of a joint investigation by the Shin Bet, the IDF and Israeli police.
Sultan Atallah, a 55-year-old from the Druze town of Yarka in northern Israel, and Rami Shami, a 33-year-old from Jadeidi-Makr, also in northern Israel. were arrested on terror charges in February 2022.
In November 2021, Atallah and Shami met with two Lebanese members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in a village in southern Turkey, the Shin Bet said in a statement.
They planned to smuggle weapons into the Jewish State and hide them for later use by terrorists, the security agency said.
The Hezbollah affiliates asked the Arab Israelis to perform reconnaissance and provide the terror group with a list of sensitive targets within Israel that would be optimal for Hezbollah to attack during wartime.
Additionally, Atallah and Shami were reportedly promised extravagant sums of money for successfully kidnapping Israeli citizens.
The Shin Bet statement emphasized that Atallah and Shami knew exactly who they were meeting with and that they posed a risk to Israel’s national security.
A senior Israeli official said that Atallah and Shami’s arrests were indicative of an effort by Iran and its proxies to utilize Israel’s minority populations as a fifth column against the state.
“This affair shows the efforts of Iranian and other terrorist elements to exploit the Arab and Druze citizens of Israel,” said a senior Shin Bet official.
“Citizens who receive inquiries from terrorist elements are urged to report this to the authorities and to avoid a situation in which they find themselves involved in serious security activities,” he said.
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