JERUSALEM – The Israeli court system this week filed an indictment against two Israeli Arabs suspected of working in Jerusalem in senior positions for the Palestinian Authority intelligence, officials revealed for publication.
The charges against the two include setting up an intelligence system in Jerusalem to clamp down on Israeli Arabs selling property to Jews in strategic areas of the city.
WND exclusively reported last year the PA had established an intelligence apparatus in Jerusalem in part to stop Israeli Arabs from selling their homes to Jews in strategic areas of the city, according to informed security sources.
The Jerusalem District prosecutor’s office yesterday filed an indictment against Fahmi Shabaneh, a resident of Jerusalem’s A-Tur neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, accusing him of holding a senior position in the PA’s General Intelligence despite his Israeli citizenship. A second indictment was filed against Jerusalem resident Mahmed Jose, who also allegedly worked in Shabaneh’s apparatus. It is illegal in Israel to work for a foreign intelligence service.
According to the indictment, Shabaneh recruited an Israeli citizen named Mutasam Abu Ganem, who lives in Jerusalem as an informant for the PA General Intelligence. Ganem’s assignment was to provide the agency with information regarding people suspected of collaborating with Israel, particularly regarding selling eastern Jerusalem land to Jews.
Palestinians seek to create a capital in eastern sections of Jerusalem. The area has large Arab neighborhoods, a significant Jewish population and sites holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
A contingent of Jewish groups, including an organization called Ateret Kohanim, work to strengthen the Jewish presence in Jerusalem by purchasing properties from Arabs, primarily in eastern neighborhoods, including in Jerusalem’s Old City. Some of the purchased properties were Jewish until Jews fled during Arab riots in the early 1900s.
WND was first to report one year ago that the PA’s Preventative Security Services had re-established an intelligence arm in Jerusalem originally formed in the 1990s by the late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat to frustrate Jewish attempts at purchasing property from Arabs.
The intelligence arm consists of activists who work in Jerusalem to identify Israeli Arabs willing to sell land to Jews, security sources told WND last year. A potential Arab seller is warned against doing business with Jewish groups. The sources did not specify particular measures the PA might take against any Arabs working to sell property to Jews. But in the past, cases have been made public in which Arabs have been killed or tortured for such activity.
According to security sources, to ensure against land sales, the PA put together a list of wealthy Palestinian and Arab donors willing to purchase property from Jerusalem Arabs who must sell their land due to financial desperation.
Israel recaptured eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – during the 1967 Six Day War.
A number of Arab-majority eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods widely regarded as slated for a Palestinian state include large numbers of Arabs – over 100,000 – who live on Jewish-owned land illegally. The Jewish National Fund, a U.S.-based nonprofit, owns hundred of acres of eastern Jerusalem land in which tens of thousands of Arabs illegally constructed homes the past few decades. Arabs are now the majority on the Jewish-owned land.
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WND Staff