Special to WorldTribune.com

JERUSALEM — Israel has reported foiling a Palestinian massacre.

Officials said four Palestinians have been arrested on charges of planning to gun down revelers at a wedding in Jerusalem.

The officials said the Palestinians planned to dress as Orthodox Jews to enter a wedding hall with an Uzi submachine gun.

“If they would have succeeded, there could easily have been 40 or 50 dead,” an official said.

On Feb. 5, a Jerusalem court indicted the four Palestinians, all residents of Israel’s capital and linked to unidentified insurgency groups. They were said to be ages 18-21 and from the Hamas-dominated Jabal Mukhaber neighborhood.

The indictment said the four defendants targeted a wedding hall with a capacity of 1,500 people and frequented by Orthodox Jews. Two of the defendants, identified as Anas Ouisat and Basel Abidat, were accused of planning the massacre while Ahmed Sarour was said to have conducted surveillance.

Sarour abandoned the insurgency cell in a dispute with Abidat and
Ouisat. The indictment said Sarour was
replaced by another Palestinian, identified as Amr Abado.

Officials said the plot, hatched in December 2013, resembled that of a
Hamas attack of a hotel during Passover services in 2002. Thirty people,
most of them elderly, were killed, with the planners released in the
prisoner exchange in 2011.

  Four Palestinians charged with plotting Jewish wedding massacre, Jabal Mukhaber, Jerusalem, Orthodox Jews