Shin Bet: Hamas Plan to Kill Israel's Lieberman Foiled

Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service said Thursday that security forces had caught a Hamas group in the West Bank planning to assassinate hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

It said three suspects in custody "collected advance intelligence on the minister's convoy," on its journeys to and from his home in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim and sought to procure an RPG launcher with which to target his vehicle.

A Shin Bet statement said Ibrahim el-Zir, Ziad el-Zir and Adnas Tzabih, all from the West Bank village of Harmala, near Nokdim, were arrested in operations by the agency, the army and the police. The statement did not specify when the arrests happened.

It said that during Israel's July-August war in Gaza Ibrahim el-Zir "began to formulate a plan to carry out an attack on the motorcade of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, with the intention that the attack would send a message to Israel and bring a stop to the war in Gaza."   

It said that "in recent days" the suspects were charged in a West Bank military court with conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to traffic in weapons.