Illegal weapons cache
Illegal weapons cachePolice Spokesperson Unit

Border police and detectives, acting on intelligence data, raided an Arab village located in Samaria on Wednesday night. In a house there they found a large cache of illegal weapons, and further stumbled upon a unique excuse for the arsenal.

After searching for a few hours through several houses in A-Taibe, just north of the Jewish community Moledet, to the east of Afula, police forces reached the house. One of the border police picked up a closed bag placed on top of a tall closet.

Inside were 2 Carl Gustav recoilless rifles, ammunition magazines, dozens of 9 millimeter bullets, and dozens of 5.56 millimeter bullets.

"The rifles are a decoration for the house," said the suspect when questioned by police over the presence of lethal weapons in his house.

Canine units from the Northern Command border police took part in the weapons bust. Minutes after the bag was found, one of the dogs pointed towards a garbage pile placed in another house.

There police found sacks filled with 7.62 millimeter bullets. Both suspects, one 25 and the other 31, were arrested on the spot, and taken for investigation to the police station in Ariel.

A commander from the Judea and Samaria border police said of the incident: "Weapons held in villages mostly serve in criminal acts and self-defense, although the path from there to using weapons for terrorism is very short. Our working premise is that we'll never be able to know what will happen in the future with the weapons, because the criminal axis in weapons overalaps with the terror axis."

"What's certain is the real weapons are not decorations," commented the commander. "We'll continue working earnestly against anyone holding weapons."

The case comes after an illegal weapons cache in the Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled village of Azariya, located between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim earlier this week.