A 2007 Killing, an Arrest in Qalqilya Almost Twenty Years Later

Israeli forces arrested Shadi Jamea in the centre of the West Bank city of Qalqilya, saying he had taken part in the shooting attack at the nearby village of Al-Funduq in which Idan Zoldan was murdered, according to a statement issued on 26 May 2026. Zoldan, who was 29, was shot dead on 19 November 2007, almost twenty years before the arrest.

The operation was a joint one, the statement said, carried out by the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, and the Israel Police's Gidonim unit 33, which it described as a special intelligence-gathering unit operating in Arab areas. Jamea had been released a short time earlier from detention by the Palestinian Authority, where he had been held until then, and was arrested afterwards. He was transferred to the Shin Bet for questioning.

Where Qalqilya is, and why an arrest there is complicated

Qalqilya sits in the north-western West Bank and contains the point in the territory closest to the Mediterranean, about 14 kilometres from the coast. Its population was recorded at 51,683 in the 2017 Palestinian census. Administratively it falls in Area A, meaning the Palestinian Authority holds civil jurisdiction, while the wider territory remains under Israeli military control. Since 2003 the Israeli separation barrier has encircled the city, separating it from farmland on the far side and leaving a narrow gap in the east controlled by the Israeli military, plus a tunnel to the neighbouring Palestinian town of Hableh.

That arrangement is why the Israeli statement stresses that the arrest happened "in the heart of Qalqilya": operations inside Area A cities involve Israeli forces entering an area nominally policed by someone else, and are typically mounted at speed and with intelligence support.

The agencies named in the statement

The Shin Bet, also called the Israel Security Agency or Shabak, is the domestic arm of Israel's intelligence community. Britannica describes it as responsible for internal security and counterintelligence, organised into divisions covering Arab affairs, non-Arab affairs and protective security, with its chief reporting directly to the prime minister. It is distinct from the Mossad, which works abroad, and from Aman, the military intelligence branch.

The police unit named in the statement, transliterated variously as Gidonim or Gideonim, is a police formation used in West Bank counter-terrorism work alongside the army and Shin Bet. Ynet has reported on its role in a separate armed arrest in Qalqilya, describing it as part of the Israel Police's Lahav 433 major-crimes division and operating on Shin Bet intelligence with IDF troops. Beyond that, little about the unit is published.

What is still unclear

The statement did not say what part Jamea is alleged to have played in the 2007 attack, whether he has been charged, or what the Palestinian Authority had held him for and why he was freed. It gave no account of how he was located, and it did not say whether anyone else has been arrested over the killing. Israel.com has not independently verified the allegations against him, and nothing here should be read as a court finding.