"Turkish President Erdogan is fickle and unpredictable," a senior security official warned the political echelon in recent days.
The source recommended "cautious conduct in the face of the Turkish courtship attack, which was intended to give Erdogan, through Israel, an influential position vis-à-vis the Biden administration in the United States."
"He is heavy and suspicious," the source concluded.
This warning was not born on a smooth page.
While the possibility of a presidential summit in Istanbul between Erdogan and President Yitzhak Herzog - which the Turkish president spoke only a few days ago - raises hope and optimism in the Foreign Ministry, the professional-security echelon seeks to cool the enthusiasm.
There, they are following with concern the renewed affair with Turkey - once a strategic, military and intelligence ally of Israel, and for the past decade a patron of the terrorist organization Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the Middle East.
The possibility of harming a number of agreements and agreements, security, maritime and economic, between Israel and allies such as Egypt and Greece and Cyprus, of which Turkey is the historical rival, also worries many senior officials.
The information flowing into the defense establishment in recent months is worrying: while Erdogan is preparing the ground and public opinion in his country for a change in relations with Israel, and despite Israeli dialogue with Kan Fidan, Turkish intelligence chief, Hamas headquarters continues to operate in Turkey. Samaria.
Although Israel has been examining information from recent days about the deportation of some Hamas operatives from Turkey, in general, Hamas-Turkey continues to operate a recruitment system of West Bank and Israeli Arabs from Istanbul, both for carrying out attacks and for gathering intelligence.
Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Aruri, who was allegedly expelled from Turkey at Israel's request, also continues to deploy his men in Turkey and even organize training and firing ranges there.
The possibility that Turkey and Israel will return to cooperating intelligence-wise, as was the case during the honeymoon of their relations, is also accompanied by doubts and concerns.
Israel has previously suspected that Turkey shared information with Israel on Iran.
According to foreign reports, Turkey has previously revealed to Iranian intelligence the identities of local spies who met on its territory with their operative from the Mossad, and about a decade ago Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Barak called Khan Fidan, the former head of the Turkish intelligence agency, "pro-Iranian."
The fact that some of the heads of the Turkish security apparatus are now identified with the Muslim Brotherhood, along with Turkey-Iran ties, does not add to the low level of trust between the two countries' security apparatus, and is currently at the door of the political echelon.
From Iran, via Turkey to the West Bank
The distant history is known.
Recent history - a little less: Just a month and a half ago, the GSS arrested four members of a Hamas firing squad in the village of Zurif, near Hebron, which was targeted from Turkey by 'Abd Rahman Raminat, a Shalit deal and Aruri associates.
The extensive Hamas infrastructure that the GSS unveiled in Judea and Samaria a month earlier, an infrastructure that planned a series of serious attacks, including kidnappings, shootings and suicide bombings - was targeted in Turkey by Aruri, and by Zakaria Najib, originally a resident of East Jerusalem who was Nachshon's kidnappers. Waxman, another release in the Shalit deal.
According to indictments filed against three East Jerusalem residents (and a publication in the Telegraph), Najib had previously tried to harness Adam Muslimani, a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp, to assassinate one of the three: former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat, police commissioner Former Roni Alsich and former MK Yehuda Glick.
He even offered Muslims budgets and training in Turkish territory.
Now Najib is back in business, and once again he is involved in directing a terrorist infrastructure, the one that was uncovered at the end of 2021 and in which 50 Hamas members from various places in the West Bank, including Ramallah, Hebron and Jenin, were active.
The announcement of the revelation of this organization was rejected about two months ago, as an Israeli tribute to the Turks, in exchange for the release of the couple Natalie and the Oknin rebels from the Turkish prison.
Operates people in Turkey.
Saleh al-Aruri,
The GSS statement on the exposure of the extensive Hamas infrastructure in Judea and Samaria stated that standard weapons, explosive belts, rifles and other weapons had been seized, but also that many funds had been transferred to members of this organization. Turkey.
Turkey has long been a base state from which Hamas conducts its financial affairs, including financing terrorist organizations in Judea and Samaria.
In a list published by the US Treasury Department on September 10, 2019, the US authorities announced that they "impose sanctions on 15 terrorist operatives and on exchange companies and money transfers that help terrorist organizations."
The list included activists and companies based in Turkey, which are involved in transferring funds to Hamas.
The American report shows that Hamas operatives and aides in Turkey are involved in fundraising, transferring them to the military wing in the Gaza Strip, financing terrorist organizations in Judea and Samaria and operating exchange companies and transferring funds in Turkey, through which money laundering is laundered.
From the information released by the US Treasury Department, it became clear that the main source of transfer of financial support to Hamas through Turkey (and sometimes through Lebanon) is Iran, and that the transfer of funds to Hamas is done through a Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The transfer process, according to these reports, involved Hamas operatives and aides and exchange companies based in Turkey.
The killer visited Turkey
The American report mentioned, among other things, Zaher Jabarin, a senior Hamas figure staying in Turkey, as one who "transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to Judea and Samaria for Hamas terrorist activities."
In Israel, it is suspected that the same Jabarin, who has meanwhile been appointed deputy Hamas commander in the West Bank, continues similar activities from Turkish soil to this day, and was involved in injecting money into the extensive Hamas infrastructure recently exposed in the West Bank.
Jabarin is currently in charge of Hamas' military buildup in what Hamas calls the "Construction Bureau."
The bureau is located in the offices of Hamas' military wing in Istanbul, next to the "headquarters of the West Bank" that directs terrorist attacks into Israel.
The Bureau is also responsible for developing Hamas' military capabilities in the naval, rocket and air fields, as well as cyber warfare, developing new weapons and transferring funds from Iran to Hamas.
The "bureau" also has a branch in Lebanon.
Israel is demanding that Turkey stop this activity altogether.
One of the intriguing questions that has not been fully resolved, at least not publicly, is whether the murderer of Eliyahu David Kay, near the Western Wall in Jerusalem about two months ago, was also trained and directed from Turkey.
Abu Shahidam, a key activist against the ascent of Jews to the Temple Mount, and linked to senior members of the Jordanian Waqf on the Temple Mount, has visited Turkey several times in recent years and met with Hamas members there.
After assassinating Kay on Chain Street in the Old City, he and his family "won" congratulations from the head of the Hamas Politburo, Ismail Haniyeh, and the deputy head of the Politburo, Saleh al-Aruri, who is directing the attacks in the West Bank, Lebanon, Qatar and other places.
Meeting with Hamas.
Abu Shahidam,
And if that's not enough - two weeks ago, another senior member of the Jordanian Waqf, Fadi Aliyan, was arrested.
The indictment filed against him in the Jerusalem District Court states that Aliyan transferred a Carlo-type weapon, which he purchased in the Nablus area to one of his relatives.
Using this rifle, the man carried out three shooting attacks against police officers operating in Issawiya in East Jerusalem.
Aliyan, like Abu Shahidam, was also a partner in attempts to harm Jewish visits to the Temple Mount.
And here is more information that indicates Turkey's central place in Hamas' terrorist system.
A month and a half ago, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked signed orders to delay the departure of 11 East Jerusalem residents, who are recognized as senior and prominent activists in the terrorist organizations Hamas and Shab al-Aqsa.
Shaked was presented with concrete information about each and every one of the activists, according to which they were going to receive guidance and instruction in Turkey, how and where to act.
Did Abu Shahidam, the murderer of Eliyahu Kay, who as mentioned visited Turkey, receive the kind of guidance and instruction that the 11 activists were about to receive?
There is no clear answer to this either, but the fact is that the orders were signed three weeks after the assassination, apparently as a lesson from Abu Shahidam's (Kay's killer) ties with Hamas members in Turkey.
Among the 11 detainees leaving the country, who according to the information passed to Shaked were about to leave for Turkey, is Sufian Fahri Abdu, from the East Jerusalem village of Jabal Mukaber.
About two decades ago, Fahri planned mass poisoning of guests at a restaurant in central Jerusalem and ran a cumulative 16 years in prison.
Issa Jalal Hadmi was also banned from leaving the country during Aryeh Deri's tenure as interior minister.
Similar orders were issued against the fee and four others on the grounds that, among other things, "transferred funds from various countries to Hamas in Israel, to establish and support the organization; to support the Moravita project that operated on the Temple Mount plaza; The Muslims. "
Another detainee on Shaked's list is Rami Zakaria Ibrahim Bracha Matzur Baher, who previously ran a prison sentence for activities within Hamas.
According to the GSS, he was a senior member of the Hamas headquarters in East Jerusalem and active in the Hamas "Knowledge Forums" project and the northern faction of the Islamic Movement on the Temple Mount, which was also intended to harm Jewish visits to the Temple Mount.
About a year and a half ago, Israel passed on to Turkey evidence and intelligence information, including names, which allegedly indicate that Hamas operatives directed terrorism against Israel from its offices in Istanbul.
Israel has been demanding for years from Turkey to remove dozens of Hamas operatives, some of whom have been granted Turkish citizenship over the years, noting that continued Hamas activity on Turkish soil contradicts the agreements passed between Turkey and Israel and the US, including the agreements reached after the famous "reconciliation agreement" In 2010. Turkey consistently denies Hamas terrorist activity in its territory, claiming that Hamas' activity in its territory is political and that it stands by its understandings and does not deviate from them.
But the aforementioned reality paints a different picture, as the connection between Hamas' infrastructure and squads and the Hamas headquarters and its people in Istanbul has been repeatedly exposed.
Even today - and against the background of Erdogan's courtship of Israel, even more so - an unusual statement issued by the GSS a few years ago is relevant, a moment after Israel expelled Turkish jurist Jamil Tekli, who was recruited by senior Hamas figure Zahar Jabarin. The GSS announced that "Turkey is contributing to Hamas 'military intensification ...", and that "Hamas' extensive military and economic activity in Turkey is taking place without any interruption, while turning a blind eye and sometimes even encouraging Turkish officials, with the help of Turkish citizens some close to the administration."
The defense establishment wants to mention these things, in light of the fact that in recent months, during Turkey's attempts to get closer to Israel, terrorist attacks and terrorist organizations directed by Hamas-Turkey have been thwarted.
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