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Israel's Strategy Against Palestinian Terrorism Pays Off

[The Australian] Ehud Yaari - Even though isolated bombings, shootings or stabbings may still occur, the West Bank has been thoroughly cleansed of active terrorist networks. It has taken six years - since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 - of systematic effort to reach this result, including nightly raids, usually by small detachments, into Palestinian towns and villages to arrest or kill terrorists, concentrated and focused co-ordination between all branches of the defense establishment and, above all, acquisition of accurate, real-time, pinpointed intelligence. This achievement must be credited to the ability of the Israel Security Agency to crack the terrorist networks by making them transparent and creating an almost intimate closeness to their top operatives. Of course, sleeper cells may still lie dormant here and there, and there is always the danger that a new network, about which there is no information as yet, is in the process of being set up. However, the production line of suicide bombers, explosive belts and roadside bombs has been totally destroyed. And attempts to manufacture homemade rockets, such as the Kassams in Gaza, have not succeeded anywhere in the West Bank, thanks to the Israeli raids. The final phase of this confrontation, directed against the Islamic Jihad terror network, has been taking place during the past 18 months in the Jenin-Tulkarm sector in the northern West Bank. Fifteen terrorists have been killed and about 150 have been captured.
2008-12-12 08:00:00
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