JERUSALEM Ñ Israeli officials arrested three Palestinians charged with involvement in a Hamas plot to poison
diners in one of the city's largest cafes.
Israeli officials said the Palestinians planned to place poison in the food and drinks served in the prominent
downtown Cafe Rimon. The cafe is located on a street that had been rocked by
several Palestinian suicide bombings over the last year, Middle East Newsline reported.
The Palestinians, residents of Jerusalem in their early twenties and who
worked in such Israeli institutions as the Hebrew University, were said to
have contacted Hamas and offered to carry out a suicide bombing at the cafe.
They told the
Islamic movement in messages over the Internet that one of the three was a
short-order cook in the restaurant.
Officials said Hamas ordered the Palestinians to abandon a suicide
attack and instead poison diners at the cafe.
Hamas directed the Jerusalem cell on how to obtain and prepare tasteless and
odorless poisons. They said the attackers planned to insert didoxin, a
medicine which in large amounts can lead to heart failure.
But the cell was said to have encountered difficulties in following
Hamas's instructions. At that point, the cell again offered to send a
suicide bomber to destroy the cafe.
"We've gone over a range of threats, but this was a surprise to us," an
official said. "We are warning restaurant owners with Arab workers to be
careful."
Officials said Israel's military and security agencies have received an
intelligence alert of massive Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. The officials did not specify the attacks being planned.
In an unrelated development, Israeli authorities released information of
an Al Qaida plot to blow up two bridges that link Israel to Jordan.
Officials said Al Qaida had trained Palestinians and other Arab nationals to
use car bombs to destroy the bridges on Dec. 31, 1999. Jordanian authorities
captured the Al Qaida cell a month before the bombings.
