By Xinhua
Jerusalem : The Israel Defence Force (IDF) is in a heightened state of alert ahead of an U.S.-host Mideast Peace conference in Annapolis next week to prevent pre-summit terror, local newspaper Jerusalem Post reported on Monday.
Defense officials said there were currently 10 specific warnings concerning Palestinian plans to launch a terror attack before the summit.
IDF now is on high alert, out of fear that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will try to perpetrate a large-scale terror attack to derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, they said.
According to the officials, while there was no concrete intelligence that the warnings were connected to the peace summit, the assumption was that terror groups, particularly the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, would try to perpetrate an attack to spoil the peace efforts.
“There is a concerted effort today by Hamas and other terror groups to derail the talks” and “one of the ways to do that is to carry out a large-scale attack inside Israel,” a defense official was quoted as saying.
The conference is scheduled to commence at the end of November in Annapolis, Maryland.