The Shin Bet security agency on Monday said it had uncovered in recent weeks a Hamas spy network operating in Israel.
In conjunction with the Israel Police, two Arab-Israeli citizens were arrested earlier this month for allegedly providing the Gaza-based terrorist group with details about Israeli security facilities and other intelligence information, including the whereabouts of Iron Dome batteries.
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According to the Shin Bet, the two men – Rami Amoudi, 30, and Rajab Daka, 34 – were recruited by Hamas in October 2019 and were tasked with filming security installations in central Israel, including "military bases, police stations and Iron Dome battery placements."
Both Amoudi and Daka are originally from the Gaza Strip, but were able to relocate to Israel as they have Israeli mothers.
Amoudi has a Jewish-Israeli mother, who helped him get the documentation necessary to move to Israel, the Shin Bet said. Amoudi had lived his entire life in Gaza but since November 2019 had been living in Tel Aviv.
Daka's mother is an Arab-Israeli from the town of Lod. He was also asked to provide the precise locations of where rockets launched from Gaza had landed during the recent rounds of fighting with Israel, apparently to help the terror group improve its accuracy, the Shin Bet added.
A father of five, Daka received an Israeli passport in 2017 and has split his time since then between Israel and Gaza, where his children lived, the Shin Bet said. He is originally from Gaza City.
"Hamas is continuing to cynically exploit the Erez Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel to promote terror in Israel," the Shin Bet said, referring to the border crossing.
The two suspected terrorists were arrested on January 2 and were charged in a Central District Court on Monday.
During the investigation the Shin Bet also uncovered other Hamas members engaged in espionage activities, among them a 32-year-old resident of Beit Lahia in the Strip who was Daka's controller, the security agency said.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State group vowed in an audio message released Monday that the extremist group would start a new phase of attacks that will focus on Israel and blasted the US administration's plan to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Despite carrying out deadly attacks throughout the world over the past years, ISIS has rarely targeted Israel. The audio appears to try to win the extremist group popularity in the region at a time when US President Donald Trump's "deal of the century" is expected to be unveiled on Tuesday.
ISIS spokesman Abu Hamza al-Quraishi urged in the 37-minute audio members of the extremist group to carry out attacks against Israel. The message was released by the group's al-Furqan media.
The rallying message comes at a time when ISIS has suffered major defeats over the past year including the death of its leader and founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a US attack in northwestern Syria. The extremists also lost in March last year the last sliver of land they controlled as part of their so-called caliphate declared in 2014 over wide parts of Iraq and Syria.
After the death of al-Baghdadi, the group named in late October his successor as Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Mawli al-Salbi, whose nom de guerre is Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi.
"[Quraishi] and his brothers in all states have vowed to begin a new phase, which is to fight the Jews and restore all that they have usurped from Muslims," the spokesman said.
The message exhorted the "soldiers of the caliphate" especially in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and across the Levant to attack Jewish targets with missiles and even chemical weapons.
The spokesman added: "To Muslims and Palestine and elsewhere, be a main force in fighting Jews and frustrating their plans such as the deal of the century."
