An Israeli Bedouin man, Mahmoud Meqdad, has confessed to planning a bomb attack at a key shopping junction, south-east of Tel Aviv.
The Bedouin are a tribe who live in the desert region of Arabia.
Israel’s Shin Bet internal security organisation claimed it foiled the bomb attack at the Bilu junction.
Meqdad, 30, allegedly confessed to planning the attack.
Accompanied by officers, he pointed at a bus stop at the central Israeli junction where he had planned to carry it out, the Shin Bet said.
He allegedly purchased materials to produce a bomb, including nuts and bolts that should serve as shrapnel for maximum damage, and a device to measures electric currents.
He even made a sketch of the explosive device, according to a copy of the indictment sent to dpa.
His brother Ahmed Meqdad, 32, allegedly aided and abetted the main suspect, a Shin Bet statement said.
The main suspect divided his time between his family home in a Bedouin village outside the southern Israeli Negev city of Beersheba. And also the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, where his wife lives, the statement added.
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza, exploited the suspect’s frequent travel through the Strip’s main Erez border crossing with Israel to recruit him.
The suspect also allegedly pointed at a lookout point near Gaza from which he took photographs of an Israeli Iron Dome missile defence battery that he allegedly passed on to Hamas.
The indictment against the two brothers and a third, 18-year-old relative was filed at Beersheba’s Magistrates court. (dpa/NAN)
