B’tselem spokesman Amit Gilutz says the group has never before taken such a step, but believes that Israeli tactics in last week’s border confrontations were “manifestly illegal.” Eighteen Palestinians were killed last Friday, including 13 in border protests. In a joint statement announcing the arrests, the General Security Service (Shin Bet) and IDF Spokesman’s Unit said the men, residents of the city of Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border, were arrested on March 12 after a coast guard patrol stopped a Gaza boat that had violated the naval blockade on the Strip by leaving the Gaza fishing zone. Jumma’a was indicted in a Beersheba court on Wednesday on a litany of charges, including planning to conduct a terror attack, acquiring weapons and belonging to a terrorist organization. The Shin Bet says Amin Jamaa’s interrogation revealed a plan to send a decoy boat that would distract the navy ship, after which a rocket would be fired at it and militants would then try to abduct wounded soldiers on board as bargaining chips for future prisoner swaps. The Shin Bet and IDF accused the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad of taking advantage of the “civilian comforts” granted by Israel to the residents of Gaza, specifically fishing rights, in order to “advance terror attacks.”

In addition to the planned naval attack, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has already carried out at least two other acts of revenge on Israel for destroying its tunnel on October 30. The news comes right on the heels of mass protests, which started on Friday, along the Israel-Gaza border in the course of the so-called Great March of Return, in which 18 Palestinians died and roughly a thousand sustained wounds.
Shin Bet and the Israeli Defence Forces announce the arrests of eleven suspected members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group off the Gazan coast suspected of planning an attack on the Israeli Navy.