Word: dichter
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Criticism from outside Israel, however, has rarely deflected Sharon from his chosen path. For the Prime Minister and Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic-security service, there is no contradiction between espousing the road map and hammering Hamas. Leaders of Hamas--like Rantisi--rejected the road map and vowed to continue the fight against Israel. If they make that decision, Sharon will see that they pay the consequences. The security forces of the Palestinian Authority--divided between those who support the road map and those who do not--are, as yet, too weak to control Hamas...
...though Ariel Sharon is reluctant to listen to a hard line on security, but it helps when the tough talk comes from someone he trusts. Sharon's Mr. Security is Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic spy and security service. (The Mossad handles foreign intelligence.) According to Israeli intelligence officials, he has had a more profound effect on the Prime Minister's handling of Palestinian terrorists than any other adviser. "He has the Prime Minister's ear," says a senior Israeli security official. With 27 years' service in the Shin Bet, the mild-looking Dichter...
...workaholic who sleeps three hours a night, Dichter, 50, who is married and has three children, headed the Shin Bet's Gaza operations before he was chosen in 1995 to rebuild the organization's VIPprotection unit following the lapses that enabled an assassin to kill Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that year. Dichter was promoted to the top job in 2000 by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak. When the intifadeh broke out five months into Dichter's five-year term, he initiated a string of high-profile counteroperations that impressed Sharon even before he became Prime Minister. To kill Hamas operatives...
Israeli military sources say Dichter was instrumental in planning Sharon's reinvasion of West Bank cities a year ago, telling the Prime Minister that for the Shin Bet to protect Israelis from terrorism, it had to be present in the Palestinian towns, not poised around their edges. Dichter, according to a senior security official, has warned that the road map, the peace plan being pushed by President Bush, doesn't sufficiently pressure the Palestinian Authority to crack down on terrorist groups. He has at times been at odds with officials from Israeli military intelligence who believe that Hamas launches...
...same time, the Bush Administration opted not to criticize Israel for threatening to march back into West Bank towns. For several weeks, Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter has told Sharon that the only way to prevent terrorist attacks is to take full control of Palestinian cities until a fence along the West Bank's border with Israel can be erected. Completing just the first phase of the wall could take as long as eight months to a year...