Sabah: The details of the Palestinian engineer who hacked the Israeli Iron Dome system

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Sabah newspaper, which is close to the Turkish government, revealed details of the fundamental role for the Turkish intelligence service, MİT, in thwarting the Israeli Mossad’s attempt to kidnap a Palestinian software engineer responsible for penetrating and disabling Iron Dome from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, during the past year 2022.

The incident came to light in October 2022, when agents of the Israeli Mossad kidnapped Palestinian software engineer Omar al Balbisi in Kuala Lumpur with the intention of transporting him to Tel Aviv for investigation, at a time when the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announced that they had a Cyber unit that ​​worked in secret against Israel.

According to Sabah newspaper, citing Turkish intelligence sources, Al Bilbisi had succeeded in penetrating the Israeli Iron Dome’s operating system in the period between 2015 and 2016, and allowed the Palestinian resistance missiles to reach their targets without significant objection.

Turkish intelligence sources reserved the full name of the Palestinian engineer, and limited themselves to mentioning his first name, “Omar”.

However, the Israeli Ynet website revealed the full name of the engineer, Omar al Bilbisi, after the Malaysian newspaper, “New Strait Times,” published details of the kidnapping in a report it published, on October 17, 2022.

The report, based on sources in Turkish intelligence, completes the scene and explains the beginning of the story of the Israeli Mossad with engineer al Bilbisi after the Malaysian sources were content with announcing the liberation of the kidnapped person and the arrest of the gang at that time.

Omar al Bilbisi graduated from the Department of Computer Science at the Islamic University of Gaza, and worked as an employee in the Technology Department of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior in Gaza.

He was able to develop a program for the Ministry that helps to easily hack Android devices at the age of 24 years.

Israeli intelligence was able to uncover the identity of al Bilbisi, who was behind the hacking and disabling of the Iron Dome system, 3 years after the incident.

According to Turkish sources, the Mossad’s attempts to recruit al Bilbisi were repeated.

In 2019, a person named “Annabel” contacted al Bilbisi, claiming to work for a Norwegian programming company, and asked him to design a software project for the company.

After a period of time, two people contacted him, under the pretext that they were from the same Norwegian company, presenting him with a job offer entirely in Norway, and when he asked them to communicate via video call on WhatsApp, they evaded him and sent him a Schengen visa as proof of their seriousness, but Bilbisi refused their offer.

Sabah newspaper reports that Bilbisi decided to move to Istanbul in March 2020 with the aim of working.

The Israeli Mossad saw this as a golden opportunity to reach him by presenting attractive job offers with high financial returns.

The first friction between Bilbisi and the Mossad occurred after his departure from Gaza in April 2021, when a Mossad agent called Raed Ghazal contacted him via WhatsApp, claiming that he was the resource manager of a French company called “Think Hire,” and presented him with a job offer as well.

Ghazal was able to meet Omar face to face in Istanbul, in June and August 2021, before the second Mossad agent called Omar Shalabi began opening a line of communication with him.

Shalabi began approaching Belbisi, and offered him $10,000 to create a software program for another French company.

He quickly did it and delivered it to the French company, which in turn sent the money in three installments via a Mossad officer who used a fake name, John Foster, which was confirmed by the Turkish intelligence service after Checking the data of Balbeisi’s “Kuwait-Turkish bank account”.

The Mossad agent, Shalabi was always asking about the presence of an obstacle for Belbeisi if he wanted to travel outside Türkiye, before he withdrew and handed over the task to a person named Nikola Radonej (44) who holds a Montenegrin passport in June 2022.

According to Sabah newspaper, Nikola was able to meet Bilbisi at the Karaköy Hotel, where he stayed between August 28 and 31, 2022, under the pretext of a new job offer, the summary of which was that the monthly salary would be $5,200 if Bilbisi worked from Türkiye, while it would be $20,000 if he agrees to work from the company’s headquarters in Brazil.

Nikola told Bilbisi that they would work together on the project via the Internet with other colleagues – who later turned out to be Israeli Mossad officers – namely: Abdel-Bar Muhammad Kaya, Fouad Osama Hijazi, and Youssef Dahman, and he asked him to choose one of them to work with him on an ongoing basis.

Turkish intelligence realized the possibility of kidnapping the Palestinian engineer, which prompted it to prevent him from traveling the first time for fear of his life.

However, with Bilbisi’s insistence on traveling to Malaysia – which doesn’t maintain diplomatic relations with Israel – on vacation for 15 days, Turkish intelligence informed its administration in Istanbul about the doubts she has regarding the threats that pose a threat to Bilbisi’s life.

Turkish intelligence issued all the necessary warnings before Belbisi left Türkiye, and installed a tracking application on his phone in order to obtain directly his location in Malaysia even if his phone was turned off, according to what the newspaper reported.

When the Palestinian engineer arrived at the airport in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, on September 28, 2022, a Mossad team that was waiting for him was able to kidnap him and interrogate him in a chalet 50 kilometers from the capital, where he was severely tortured and interrogated for 36 hours via video conference with officers in Tel Aviv.

Mossad agents’ questions to Belisi focused on how he penetrated the Iron Dome and obscured the missiles’ vision for a period of time.

They also tried to find out how to deactivate the hacks that the Palestinian engineer had carried out on the phones of Israeli soldiers and officers earlier.

In addition, Mossad inquired about the presence of computer engineers, software engineers, and other programmers participating in electronic warfare from Istanbul.

Sabah newspaper said that as soon as Turkish intelligence verified the whereabouts of Bilbisi, they immediately sent the location coordinates to the Malaysian authorities, who in turn carried out an operation with special forces and were able to free Bilbisi unharmed.

A court in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, ordered the arrest of 11 of the kidnappers.

In recent weeks, Turkish intelligence also arrested Mossad agent Osama Hijazi, transferred Bilbisi back to Türkiye, and placed him under its security protection, according to the same source.

This operation is considered one of the major and most important operations in the history of Turkish intelligence.

The Turkish media also reported the incident remarkably, and the name of the Palestinian engineer Omar al Bilbisi became known in Turkish media circles as “the shrewd Ghazi”.

Sabah newspaper indicated that this is not the Mossad’s first attempt to target Palestinian activists and experts in Malaysia, and that in 2018, Palestinian electrical engineer Fadi al Batsh was killed by two motorcyclists working for the Mossad.

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