JERUSALEM: The Shin Bet internal security service has arrested 10 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused of planning to kidnap Israelis, the agency said yesterday.
The arrests were made several months earlier but a media blackout was imposed.
“Shin Bet, with the help of the army and the Israeli police, arrested an armed cell of the PLFP that was preparing to kidnap Israelis who could serve as bargaining chips in exchange for the release of PFLP chief Ahmed Saadat, who is held in Israel,” the agency said in a statement.
The two key suspects, residents of the West Bank city of the Ramallah, allegedly plotted to kidnap an Israeli soldier to be traded for Saadat, who was sentenced to 30 years in Israeli prison in 2008 over his involvement in multiple attacks.
The two are being charged before a military tribunal with plotting to kidnap a soldier. The other eight face charges of “terror activities against soldiers” and disturbing public order.
Israeli intelligence charges ‘PFLP cell’
Israeli intelligence charges ‘PFLP cell’
Syria’s Sharaa grants Kurdish Syrians citizenship, language rights for first time, SANA says
- The decree for the first time grants Kurdish Syrians rights, including recognition of Kurdish identity as part of Syria’s national fabric
- It designates Kurdish as a national language alongside Arabic and allows schools to teach it
DAMASCUS: Syria’s President Ahmed Al-Sharaa issued a decree affirming the rights of the Kurdish Syrians, formally recognizing their language and restoring citizenship to all Kurdish Syrians, state news agency SANA reported on Friday.
Sharaa’s decree came after fierce clashes that broke out last week in the northern city of Aleppo, leaving at least 23 people dead, according to Syria’s health ministry, and forced more than 150,000 to flee the two Kurdish-run pockets of the city.
The clashes ended after Kurdish fighters withdrew.
The violence in Aleppo has deepened one of the main faultlines in Syria, where Al-Sharaa’s promise to unify the country under one leadership after 14 years of war has faced resistance from Kurdish forces wary of his Islamist-led government.
The decree for the first time grants Kurdish Syrians rights, including recognition of Kurdish identity as part of Syria’s national fabric. It designates Kurdish as a national language alongside Arabic and allows schools to teach it.
It also abolishes measures dating to a 1962 census in Hasaka province that stripped many Kurds of Syrian nationality, granting citizenship to all affected residents, including those previously registered as stateless.
The decree declares Nowruz, the spring and new year festival, a paid national holiday. It bans ethnic or linguistic discrimination, requires state institutions to adopt inclusive national messaging and sets penalties for incitement to ethnic strife.
The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), that controls the country’s northeast, have engaged in months of talks last year to integrate Kurdish-run military and civilian bodies into Syrian state institutions by the end of 2025, but there has been little progress.
