(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)

On 22 June 2004, the ISA, Israel Police and the IDF foiled a terrorist attack involving both murder and the kidnapping of a Jew for bargaining purposes.

The murder was to have been perpetrated by Ala’a Ahmed Manam Salah, 31, a resident of the Gaza Strip who had been in Israel illegally, and who had been wanted in connection with the 1994 murder of Bnei Ayish resident Yossi Zandani.  (Zandani was strangled and stabbed.  A statement in which the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine took credit for the murder was found on his body, as were Salah’s fingerprints.)

Salah was recruited to perpetrate the attack approximately two months ago by senior Gaza Strip terrorists (including Salam Al-Rahman Salam Thabet, 29, an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade member who works for Palestinian Preventative Security), who also financed it.

Salah was supposed to murder a Jewish merchant who was due to go to Taiybeh for a business deal and transfer his body to terrorists in Tulkarm, who would then hide the body.  Apparently, negotiations for the release of the body were to have been conducted from the Gaza Strip.

Salah, who was armed with a pistol, was arrested in a wide-ranging operation in Taybe.  Two other terrorists - Samar Salah Masoud, 33 and Mahmoud Muhammad Hasin, 22, were arrested in Tulkarm.