Security forces thwarted a large attack terrorists planned to carry out in Jerusalem, it was released for publication Wednesday evening.
Earlier this week, five Palestinians, members of Islamic Jihad, were arrested in the vicinity of the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem.
The five were planning on carrying out a double suicide bombing in the capital on Thursday, near the Ramot neighborhood. The plan was apparently to detonate explosives on a bus and in a cafe or synagogue. Two explosive belts have been found.
Behind the planned attack was the Islamic Jihad's headquarters in the West Bank, which is responsible for carrying out an attack at the Stage nightclub in Tel Aviv in February, in which five people were killed.
Remember what Abbas said just this week:
The era of suicide bombing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be over and the culture of violence is changing in the region, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an interview aired on Sunday.
Abbas, who was in Washington last week to meet U.S. President George W. Bush, said Palestinian-Israeli violence was down 90 percent in the past four months and he was optimistic for the future.
Asked in an interview with ABC's "This Week" whether the era of suicide bombing was over, he said: "I believe it is over."
"We have started to deal with the culture of violence, we stopped the culture of violence and the Palestinian people have started looking at it as something that should be condemned and it should stop."