Jewish Settlers Suspected in Plot to Bomb Girls' School

By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press

BAT AYIN, West Bank (May 10, 2002 4:50 p.m. EDT) - Four Jewish settlers have been arrested on suspicion they planned to set off a large bomb near an Arab hospital and a school in Jerusalem, police said Friday.
The first two men were arrested April 28 after police found in their vehicle a deadly cocktail of flammable materials, gas canisters and explosive charges hooked up to timers.

A news blackout was imposed as the investigation continued. The interrogation led to the arrests of two more men, police said. The gag order was partially lifted Friday.

Three of those in custody are from the West Bank Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin, home to about 110 religious families, including some American immigrants.

The fourth suspect is from the Maon settlement, where a tense standoff between settlers and soldiers in 1999 ended with soldiers removing more than 100 settlers who were holed up in the hilltop farm, known as Havat Maon, to resist a government decision to dismantle the outpost.

Police identified the two suspects arrested April 28 as Yarden Morag, 25, and Shlomo Dvir, 27, both of Bat Ayin. Morag and Dvir were stopped by a routine early morning police patrol as they unhitched a trailer from their car, parked between a hospital and a local girls' school, Israel TV's Channel Two reported.

When the two refused to explain their presence in a predominantly Arab neighborhood, police searched their vehicle, discovering ingredients for a massive homemade bomb in the trailer. The trailer contained two fuel containers, two large gas canisters and two explosive charges, Channel 2 reported.

The device was set to explode at 7:30 a.m. - as students would have arrived at school.

Morag's mother, Dalia, 48, said her son, a seminary student, was innocent and that he and the three other men in custody have not been allowed to see a lawyer.

Morag said she only heard of the charges against her son Friday. At three closed-door court hearings, she and other relatives of the suspects were forced to stand across the street from the courtroom, she said.

On the night of her son's arrest, 30 policemen and agents from Israel's Shin Bet security service came into her home with dogs and searched through papers, clothing and other items. "It's strange and frightening," she said.

She described her son, a father of four children, as a shy man. She said he studied Torah, the Jewish holy book, at a seminary in Jerusalem from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the week and in his free time wrote music for guitar and piano.

Morag said the other two suspects from Bat Ayin and her son knew each other but did not spend much time together. Dvir is an environmental studies teacher at an elementary school and police identified the third Bat Ayin resident as Ofer Gamliel, 43, a furniture maker. The fourth suspect was Yosef Ben Baruch from Maon.

On Thursday, Jewish extremists distributed a leaflet in which they claimed responsibility for the killing of eight Palestinians in the past year. The group said the killings were to avenge deadly attacks against Israelis in the past 19 months of fighting.

Police said the four settlers arrested in Jerusalem are not connected to the killings of Palestinians in the West Bank.

In the 1980s, a group of Jewish extremists bombed the cars of Arab mayors in the West Bank, seriously injuring two of them and an Israeli bomb-disposal expert. Another group had planned to blow up a mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, but the plot was foiled.