The suspects planned to assassinate two people, a senior Israeli scientist and the mayor of a large Israeli city, authorities said.
The Israeli authorities said on Tuesday that they have arrested seven residents of a predominantly Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem who planned to assassinate, on behalf of Iran, a senior Israeli scientist and the mayor of a large Israeli city.
A statement by Israel’s police and Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, did not name the scientist or identify the mayor of the city.
The suspects were arrested in recent weeks and have yet to be indicted, it said, describing them as residents of Israel. They were from the Beit Safafa neighborhood, which is populated mainly by Palestinians.
Some of the suspects took photographs of the scientist’s house in preparation for the assassination attempt, according to the statement, which said they also had planned to blow up a police vehicle and throw a grenade at a house in return for the equivalent of around $50,000 in total.
The statement gave few details of the identities of the suspects but it said that one, a 23-year-old Israeli citizen, had recruited the others. They were then directed to spray graffiti in a different part of Jerusalem, set fire to cars and gather intelligence, the statement said. The statement gave no reason for why those targets were suggested.
The statement came a day after the police said they had dismantled a different spy network made up of seven Jewish Israelis who were gathering intelligence for Iran. It was not clear when the suspects were arrested or why both spy cases were made public this week.
Israel’s government has said it will retaliate against Iran for a drone and missile attack carried out against Israel on Oct. 1. Direct conflict between Israel and Iran broke out in April after a clandestine war that had lasted for decades.
The English language version of Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, has made no mention of the two cases or carried any response from the Iranian authorities to the allegations.
The neighborhood where the suspects lived is mostly part of East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its undivided capital, but most East Jerusalem residents are Palestinians who want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state. The United Nations Security Council has deemed it occupied territory.
The police said on Tuesday that, following a separate investigation with other Israeli security agencies, they have recently indicted a man who was planning to attack a demonstration on behalf of hostages held in Gaza. It gave no further details of that plot.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news. More about Matthew Mpoke Bigg
