A terror attack which took place on June 19th near Dolev in which one person was killed and another injured was, as noted here previously, ignored by the BBC’s English language news services but reported on the BBC Arabic website.
On July 15th the Israeli police and security forces announced the arrest of the terrorist suspected of killing 25 year-old Danny Gonen, together with four accomplices.
“In a joint operation by the Shin Bet, the Judea and Samaria Police’s counter-terrorism unit and the IDF, Shahin and several other terrorists were arrested, security forces said. […]
They confessed during questioning to carrying out a series of terrorist attacks, including the murder of Danny Gonen,” the Shin Bet said.
Before the attack, the terrorists had carried out “shootings against security forces in the Kalandia refugee camp region,” the Shin Bet said. The cell “gathered intelligence on the natural spring in the area,” in order to target Israelis who passed through, it said.
During the investigation, security forces seized weapons, including the firearm allegedly used in the attack.”
Although the attack was claimed at the time by Hamas, the majority of those arrested are Fatah-Tanzim operatives and the suspected gunman Muhammad Abu Shahin is on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll.
“Shahin, 30, is a former member of the Fatah-affiliated Force 17, and receives a monthly salary from the Palestinian Authority.
He spent two years in an Israeli prison, from 2006 to 2008, after confessing to planning shooting and stabbing attacks. Shahin arrived at the spring near Dolev to gather intelligence before last month’s shooting on multiple occasions, the agency said.
In 2014, he carried out six shootings, including one that wounded a soldier, the Shin Bet added.
Security forces also named Amjad Adwan, 35, also a Tanzim-Fatah operative from the Kalandia camp, as a suspect. Adwan “supplied ammunition to Shahin, and acted as a lookout in a number of shooting attacks,” the Shin Bet said. He too spent time in Israeli prison, in 2008, for arms dealing and carrying out a bombing attack.
A third suspect, named by the agency as Ashraf Amar, 24, also from Kalandia, is “an operative in the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence” branch, the Shin Bet said. He has no prior arrests, and the Shin Bet said he headed out with Shahin to carry out an attack in recent months, but that the attackers turned back in the end.
Two additional suspects, one a member of Fatah-Tanzim, and another who has no organizational affiliation, are also under arrest on suspicion of involvement in killing Gonen.”
In addition to its failure to report the fatal terror attack when it took place, BBC News has to date refrained from reporting on these arrests.
Likewise, BBC audiences remain unaware of the fact that an Israeli soldier was stabbed in the back by a Palestinian woman on July 15th or that residents of the Ashkelon area in southern Israel had to scramble to their air raid shelters just after 2 a.m. on July 16th due to yet another missile attack from the Gaza Strip.
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