The authorities caught on to the gun smuggling scheme before external groups could buy all the weapons, police said. Two suspects in particular are believed to have plotted the operation, in which painters and building renovators would rob the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) base they were working on. From there, the arms would be pawned off to willing buyers throughout the country, according to a Jerusalem Post report.
Out of the 33 weapons identified by officials, 11 have been recouped, police said. When pinning down the pair of criminals, authorities confiscated small arms, a different but unspecified rifle, illicit drugs and vehicles.
It’s not entirely clear which groups were receiving the arms. However, if the guns were funneling out through Israel’s northern border, they may have been destined for fighters in Syria or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“The two worked systematically and the same day sold 10 weapons to criminal organizations in the South, 18 weapons to criminal organizations in the North, and four days later another five weapons were sold to criminal organizations in the North,” police told the Post. The initial theft occurred at the Sde Teiman base on May 26.
Officials initially didn’t believe the weapons had been stolen because there weren’t signs of forced entry, Israel National News noted. But the security breach has led Israeli officials to rethink how they worked with contractors altogether.
"Irregularities in hiring procedures for contractors have been found," an IDF spokesperson said on June 6, and consequently "the deputy chief of staff decided to stop work" on all IDF bases until the service can figure out how to deal with sketchy contractors.
IDF personnel have been authorized to fire at the legs of suspected intruders at military bases following a string of break-ins. High-tech technologies were copped from the Tze’elim base in southern Israel in June, just days after a Golan Hieghts base was raided.
