Word: idf
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...suicide bombing in the Negev town of Dimona last month--highlights Israel's continued vulnerability to terrorist attacks. Just because fewer Palestinian terrorists are slipping into Israel from the Palestinian West Bank doesn't mean that they have stopped trying. Says an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF): "Our people sleep comfortably in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv because the IDF is putting in a huge effort, day and night, in the West Bank to prevent terror...
...good deal less visible--than its fight in Gaza. In the West Bank, Israel relies on a network of Palestinian collaborators and wide-scale arrests. Last year more than 6,650 suspected Palestinian militants were rounded up, among them, claim Israeli intelligence officers, 279 potential suicide bombers. (IDF troops perform another function in the West Bank. In effect, they prop up Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Without the presence of Israeli troops, his advisers concede, the West Bank would soon fall to Hamas militants, just as Gaza did last June...
...Israel--and especially for those who live in settlements speckled throughout the West Bank--the looming danger is from militants who want to emulate their comrades in Gaza and launch rocket attacks. The IDF says it has uncovered clandestine explosives factories, which are said to prove that Hamas and other militant groups, such as Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, are trying to learn rocket technology...
...hills and scores of Israeli checkpoints, Nablus is dubbed by Israelis the "Capital of Terror." One officer says, "If I gave my men so much as a 15 minute break from their duties, there would be a bomb leaving Nablus on its way to Tel Aviv." No kidding: the IDF says that at the Nablus checkpoints last year, soldiers discovered 31 bombs, four guns and six grenades. And the Israelis claim that they destroyed 14 explosives labs in Nablus alone last year. One of them, hidden in the catacombs beneath the Casbah, was also used to make short-range rockets...
...Nablus battalion headquarters of the IDF, the senior officer has a display case with bottles of champagne and wine, each a gift from his superiors, each tagged with the name of a terrorist captured or killed. The Israelis rely on a web of informers for information. Saleh Abdul Jawad, a political science professor at Birzeit University, says Israel has "tens of thousands" of Palestinian informers on its payroll. Some keep tabs on who prays at mosques, while others burrow into militant cells, planting bugs and betraying planned actions to their controllers. "Every small part of Palestinian life is under Shin...