JERUSALEM – The first bombmaking husband and wife – young Palestinian newlyweds living on the West Bank – has been nabbed by Israeli authorities, officials said yesterday.
Suspected Hamas operative Samar Sabih, 22, pregnant and now in an Israeli jail awaiting trial, is the first known female bombmaker of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Her arrest, along with her husband, stunned her new in-laws in the West Bank town of Tulkarm.
Relatives descrived Samar as a graduate of Arab-language studies at Gaza’s Islamic University who had no contact with Hamas or other terrorist organizations.
A few months ago, Samar submitted paperwork to Israeli authorities asking for rarely granted permission to travel through Israel to the West Bank town of Tulkarm, where her fiancé, a cousin, lives.
Israeli authorities said they approved the request because she had no security breaches on her record.
Once at Tulkarm, she married the fiancé, construction worker Ramsi Sabih.
But she began giving lessons in bombmaking to him in case he had to replace her if she was arrested, according to the Shin Bet intelligence service.
The new bride also allegedly trained Hamas operatives in Ramallah, including Ali Kadi, who abducted a Jerusalem factory worker and killed him during the summer.
But in late August, Israeli forces in a helicopter and more than a dozen Jeeps swooped down on the newlyweds’ home and arrested them, said Jaber Sabih, Ramsi’s father.
“If I had known that Samar would bring these soldiers into my house, I would not have brought her from Gaza,” he said.
The couple’s arrest and that of 115 other suspected militants were carried out over the summer but not disclosed until Monday.
While her family continues to deny the bombmaking charges, Israeli officials said Samar had confessed.
Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip said they knew little about Samar, whom they called merely a supporter of the organization, and denied they were trying to recruit women.
“The role of women in Hamas is that they are wives and mothers of the fighters,” spokesman Mushir al-Masri said.
But Israeli officials said this was latest escalation of the 5-year-old Palestinian uprising, which saw women used for the first time as suicide bombers.
Aharon Zeevi, the head of Israeli military intelligence, said the level of bombmaking expertise is much higher among Gaza militants than among their West Bank counterparts.
With Post Wire Services