The Kfar Saba country club has a reputation as a fashionable hotspot in a prosperous commuter town just half an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv. The £700-a-year, members-only club attracts young, professional Israelis to its state-of-the-art gym and luxurious pool. Its bar, a magnet for young singles, specialises in Vodka Red Bull cocktails. The barman boasts that it is the best pickup spot in the area.

It is an unlikely backdrop to a daring attempt by Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Islamic fundamentalist group, to assassinate Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israeli army and the club’s most prominent member.

Yet last month Rawi Sultani, 23, an Israeli Arab law student and fellow member, was arrested by agents from Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and charged with planning to murder the general. The allegation points to an alarming lack of security among Israel’s well-off elite and the military who rub shoulders with them.

Sultani, a lawyer’s son, was a regular at the gym. A supporter of the Arab nationalist Balad party, he was attending its youth conference in Ilfrane, Morocco, in 2008 when, according to court documents, he was first identified by militants as a potential agent.

During a film about the 2006 war in Lebanon, the camera zoomed in on an Israeli general. Sultani jumped up and shouted: “That's my gym mate. I see him twice a week in my gym in Israel. He’s Gabi Ashkenazi, commander of the Israeli army.”

Later that evening he was approached by an older man who introduced himself as Salman Harb. Over coffee, Harb told Sultani he was a member of Hezbollah and casually asked if he could keep touch from Israel. Sultani agreed and an intense e-mail correspondence began.

A Shin Bet source claimed: “Salman was a spotter. His job was to hook potential Hezbollah agents. After this he would have been passed on to a more senior controller.”

Recruiting Sultani was an astonishing stroke of luck for Hezbollah. After the death of Imad Mugniyeh, its head of security, who was blown up by Israeli agents in Damascus in February last year, the organisation was seeking revenge.

The security source claimed Harb invited Sultani to meet him in the Polish town of Lodz just before Christmas. At the last moment he told Sultani that he could not get a visa but his brother, Sami, would be there instead.

It was to be Sultani’s first taste of tradecraft, the classic evasion techniques used by spies and terrorists. “Meet me at Piotrkowska Street next to the chemist’s,” Sultani was told. When he arrived at the shop nobody was there, but his mobile rang again. “Go to the park,” said Sami, ensuring Sultani had no “tail”.

Sami was direct. He said Hezbollah had a list of questions about the precise location of the club and its security, Ashkenazi’s bodyguards and their weapons. The next day he gave Sultani an e-mail address and encrypted software for secret communication.

Sultani returned from Poland on January 5. Details of his alleged plot remain murky, although fellow club members believe it would have been easy to smuggle a bomb into the gym in a sports bag.

Last month Shin Bet, which seems to have been been watching him since his return, decided he posed too big a threat to remain at large. “At 9am on August 10, I thought war had broken out,” said Fuad Sultani, Rawi’s father. “More than 30 heavily armed agents surrounded my home.”

They stormed into his son’s bedroom. “They pointed their guns at Rawi and arrested him on the spot.”

Sultani had been charged with disclosing information harmful to state security, meeting a foreign agent and plotting to assassinate Ashkenazi, said his father. In all, he faces 37 years in prison. He denies the charges.

Since the arrest, the general and his bodyguards have not been spotted at the country club.

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