Israel’s Southern District Attorney (Criminal) on Sunday submitted to the Be’er Sheva District Court an indictment against a Hamas terrorist on 18 counts of acts against state security. Among other things, according to the indictment, the accused, Medhat Ben Fawzi Abu Snima, 24, a resident of Gaza, in 2014 joined a partnership that ran a smuggling tunnel from Egypt to the Gaza Strip.
The tunnel is 0.6 miles long, leading from Egyptian Rafah to the Gazan Rafah. The buy-in cost was $7,000. Over the period between early 2014 and the end of 2015, the accused and his partners smuggled through their tunnel military uniforms for the Hamas naval commando unit, as well as weapons which were delivered to merchants in Gaza. The return the accused collected on his investment was $2,000 a month. That success story ended when the Egyptian military flooded the tunnel and demolished it.
According to the indictment, Abu Snima joined Hamas in 2007 and collaborated with other Hamas members to cause harm to IDF soldiers as well as to Israeli civilians. He conducted observations of Israeli military targets near the Gaza border and planted explosives against IDF jeeps in order to cause the death of IDF soldiers.
In 2012, following the end of Operation Pillar of Defense, the accused and others shot rockets at an IDF post and shot mortar shells at the Kerem Shalom crossing. He also participated in Hamas military training as well as in a course to become a professional sniper.
The indictment also contains counts of contacting a foreign agent, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, communicating information to the enemy with the intention of harming state security, illegal military training, membership and activity in an illegal association, and weapons violations.