The Shin Bet security service announced Wednesday that it had successfully foiled a double suicide attack on Tel Aviv and Netanya, planned by the Islamic Jihad.

The Shin Bet said they had arrested two women from the Gaza Strip, who were slated to carry out the attacks.

The two women, both mothers to young children, were arrested at the Erez crossing from Gaza into Israel on May 20 as they were trying to enter Israel.

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Fatma Yunes Hassan Zak, 39, a resident of Gaza, mother of eight children and pregnant with her ninth, had been responsible for an Islamic Jihad Gaza women's labor office for four years. She had been in contact with Islamic Jihad terrorists and coordinated contacts on their behalf with women who had volunteered to be suicide bombers.

Approximately three months ago, her niece, Ruda Ibrahim Yunes Haviv, 30, a resident of Gaza and mother of four children, sought her assistance in perpetrating a suicide attack. Zak, who decided to participate in the attack as well, contacted her Islamic Jihad liaison, who aided the two women in putting their plan into operation.

Haviv requested the Israeli authorities' permission to travel to Ramallah, falsely claiming she needed to undergo medical tests. Zak was supposed to accompany her to the fabricated treatment in Ramallah.

The Shin Bet maintains that the two were due to meet with an Islamic Jihad militant in Ramallah, who was supposed to give them explosive belts and take them to the the locations of the planned attacks.