Police and Shin Bet agents arrested a Palestinian man on suspicion of plotting a terror attack in central Israel at the behest of an Iranian handler, a police spokesman said Tuesday.
The suspect, a man in his 30s residing in East Jerusalem’s Issawiya neighborhood, had been in contact online with an Iranian agent who asked him to carry out various “missions” against the State of Israel.
The agent reportedly asked his recruit to stage a terror attack in central Israel, but the suspect was arrested before he could set the plan into motion.
The suspect also received thousands of shekels for hanging signs against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu around Jerusalem, burning IDF uniforms, and gathering information about well-known sites in the capital, including the Western Wall and Mahane Yehuda Market.
He was also asked to set fire to a forest and smuggle arms into the West Bank, police said, but those missions were foiled upon his arrest.
Footage shared by law enforcement showed the suspect hanging a sign over a highway running through the Mount Scopus tunnel in Jerusalem, on an unknown date.
During a search of the suspect’s home in Issawiya, police seized cash allegedly transferred from the agent, a can of spray paint, two airsoft guns, and a substance thought to be a drug.
Officers also found in his possession a banner with a spray-painted message reading: “Bibi is a dictator, we are not weeds. Ronen Bar, we support you.”
The banner — which masquerades as having come from an anti-Netanyahu activist — seems to refer to an April statement from the premier, in which he derided a group of IDF reservists advocating a hostage-ceasefire deal as “weeds… trying to weaken the State of Israel and the IDF.”
According to police, the suspect was also offered thousands of shekels to enlist his own mother to carry out additional tasks for the Iranian agent.
The man’s detention was extended Tuesday, though police did not specify for how long.
State prosecutors were expected to file an indictment against him for serious security offenses in the days following the investigation’s announcement.
In recent years, police have arrested dozens of suspects, many Israeli citizens, for espionage on behalf of Iranian agents, with some agreeing to take on other tasks, including assassinations of senior figures.
The foreign handlers contact potential recruits through social media, offering them money to carry out missions to damage Israel’s national security.
At the outset, these tasks typically consist of less serious crimes such as political vandalism, but quickly escalate into severe security offenses, like intelligence gathering on IDF facilities and other sensitive sites.