Israel has arrested eight Arab residents of Jerusalem suspected of planning to take hostages and exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, a police spokesman said on Sunday. The eight members of the militant organization Hamas intended to hijack an Israeli bus and drive it to the West Bank to demand the prisoners’ release, spokesman Gil Kleiman said. He said they also planned to kidnap a soldier and build bombs in a Jerusalem apartment. “The Israeli security agency and an undercover unit of the Jerusalem district police recently caught a Hamas cell…The members of the terror cell were given instructions by Hamas prisoners in an Israeli jail,” Kleiman said. Israel arrested another group of East Jerusalem residents last year for carrying out suicide bombings that killed scores of Israelis. The discovery of that Hamas cell, the first uncovered in Jerusalem since Palestinians rose up against Israeli occupation in September 2000, shocked many Israelis. Full Story
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