Israeli Islamists Join Terror League, Hide British Terrorist

For some years now the Israeli Islamic Movement has been known to serve the Palestinian Hamas terrorist group as financial conduit and money launderer. Its fund-raising efforts for the families of Palestinian suicide killers have not gone unnoticed either. Some members have even been caught aiding and abetting these killers, transporting them to and from target areas, providing hideouts and intelligence – in more than one case to the Lebanese Hizballah as well.
So what happened on Tuesday, May 13, to bring out hundreds of Israeli police and Shin Beit agents to in a swoop on the Islamic Movement’s northern offices in Umm al Fahm, not far from the West Bank border, to round up 13 and later another 2 of its leaders, including Sheikh Ra’ed Salah?
debkafile‘s counter-terror sources have two answers:
1.Israeli counter-terror and intelligence authorities believe that one of the Islamic movement’s clandestine cells is hiding Omar Khan Sharif, the failed British suicide bomber whose explosive belt did not work at Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv on April 30. His partner’s did, killing 3 Israelis and injuring 60. debkafile‘s sources discovered that Khan knocked over an Israeli security guard while fleeing from the scene and snatched his papers and money. This enabled him to take a taxi to the hideout whose address he received from his Hamas hosts in Gaza in case the attack failed and the pair of British terrorists needed a safe hideout.
According to information reaching Israeli investigators, Hamas planners surmounted the difficulty of getting the British bombers through checkpoints to Palestinian areas but setting up a safe house inside Israel, courtesy of the Islamic Movement or one of its factions. It is assumed that this hideout was not prepared for a single operation, but as a permanent safe house for terrorists, suicides or others, who are unable to carry out an attack and need a safe place to hide up without risking crossing back to the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
The 15 Islamic Movement executives were detained by a Tel Aviv remand court before dawn just after their arrest. Israel hopes that under the influence of the due process of the law some detainee will spill he beans about the safe house and provide a lead to the badly wanted British terrorist.
2.The terrorist financing issue is far from plain sailing. The Hamas group’s primary source of funding is not the Israeli Islamic movement but Saudi Arabia, which is thought to transfer about $50m a year to the Palestinian terror group, 70 percent of which flows directly into its terror chest. The Saudis also send money to the Israeli Islamists. The Tel Aviv bombing oiled by Saudi funds set up for the first time a terror chain leading to the British terrorists who hailed from Derbyshire and Finsbury Park, moved to Damascus at whose medressas they were recruited and trained for their mission, called in at the Gaza Strip’s Hamas branches and wound up in the Israeli Muslims’ safe house.
Israeli security authorities decided to snap this chain of terror before Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem once again suffered the horrendous fate inflicted on the Saudi capital this week.
Those scenes show exactly how al Qaeda uses Saudi largesse. The scenes at Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv and at many previous sites targeted by Palestinian terrorists are just as revealing of the objectives of another recipient, the Hamas. The Israeli Islamic Movement is very small potatoes in the world terror league. But if it gets away with concealing Omar Khan Sharif from Israeli justice, it will become much more important.