debkafile Reports: Hizballah suspected behind “The Galilee Freedom Brigades” which claims Friday’s Jerusalem attack

The claim was made over the Maan Palestinian news agency Monday Aug. 13 four days after Ahmad Hatib from Manda village, Galilee, died after grabbing the sidearm of an Israeli security guard on Jerusalem’s Christian Street and shooting him in the shoulder. Ten people were injured before he was killed.
debkafile cites Israeli intelligence sources as rating this claim more credible than earlier assumptions of responsibility by Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades, the Islamic Jihad and the PFLP. They link the Jerusalem attack to undercover Hizballah cells believed planted in the Galilee villages of Manda and Kafr Kana. Those sources recall three crimes attributed to the Galilee Freedom Brigades in 2003: the murder of the Israeli soldier Oleg Shaichat, the disappearance of Dana Bennet from Tiberias and the ambush of an Israeli policy patrol.
One source told DEBKA that if Hatib did indeed act on behalf one of those cells, Hizballah can claim to have carried out its first cross-border attack in Israel since kidnapping the Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev last summer and sparking the Lebanon War.
Israel security authorities have therefore reopened the file on the unsolved murder of Michael Ronkin, 68, who was stabbed to death on July 13 outside his home in Nazareth Illit. This murder and the attack in Jerusalem were carried out by lone killers who staked out their victims before seizing the opportunity to strike, regardless of being outgunned. This is a departure from regular Islamist and Palestinian terror methods and points to killers who are highly motivated and well trained. The Israeli Islamic movement called Hatib a shahid.
In the four years since Oleg Shaichat’s murder, Israeli security authorities have not got to the bottom of the Hizballah network suspected to have been planted between Carmiel and Nazareth Illit, although even in 2003, there were signs that Hizballah was sending orders and money to Arab citizens deep inside northern Israel.