At least twenty members of a cell affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan were arrested “on suspicion of forming a military wing and planning to smuggle arms into the West Bank,” according to a report today in The Times of Israel.

The men, all members of the Muslim Brotherhood or Jordan’s engineer’s guild, were arrested after two members returned from a solidarity visit to the Gaza Strip where they received military training, according to Qatar-based al-Jazeera.

The satellite channel reported Sunday that the men attempted to train others in military operations to be carried out against Israelis in the West Bank.

The suspects were reportedly raising money for the purchase and smuggling of weapons into the West Bank.

The arrests in Jordan follow last week’s announcement by Israel’s Shin Bet that it had arrested thirty men belonging to Hamas in the West Bank for planning high casualty terror attacks. The Time of Israel’s report of Shin Bet’s arrests reveal a number of similarities between the two groups, most notably the presence of Jordanian citizens who had trained in Gaza.

After the arrests in Jordan, senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri quickly denied that the terrorist group was operating outside of Israel, saying, “Hamas has committed not to operate from Jordan or in Jordan. Jordan is not an area of activity for it, and Jordan’s security agencies know our commitment to this. Our sphere of activity and resistance is Palestine, and our enemy is the Zionist occupation.”

Jonathan Schanzer contested this claim in Where the Shadiest Players Find a Home, which was published in the September 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine:

Then there is the presence of the aforementioned Saleh al-Arouri. The Israeli news website Ynet reported last year that Arouri “operates out of Turkey, with the backing of the Turkish government.” While Arouri’s activities are generally below the radar, it is believed that he is raising funds for Hamas. Last year, the Israel Security Agency (Shabak) announced the arrest of two Palestinians involved in smuggling money for Hamas from Jordan to the West Bank. During their interrogation, the suspects ceded that some of the money was being smuggled on behalf of Arouri.

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