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Reuters | Sky News |  PhotosSunday March 30, 01:35 PM |
"Welcome to hell" Israelis tell US By Timothy Heritage
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli soldier raises his rifle and looks
down the sight as he orders a driver approaching a West Bank checkpoint to
stop and turn off the engine a safe distance away.
The driver steps out and is told to lie down. He then rises to lift his
shirt and show he has no bomb strapped to his waist. Soldiers beckon him
forward, check his documents and keep their distance as he opens the car
boot to show what is inside.
The scene is familiar in the West Bank, where Israel faces a threat
from suicide bombers spearheading a Palestinian uprising, making Israel
the ideal country to turn to for advice after four U.S. soldiers were
killed in a suicide car bombing in Iraq.
Israel has tackled many suicide bombings in the past decade,
particularly since the Palestinian uprising for an independent state began
30 months ago. It has erected heavily-fortified blockades across the West
Bank as its first line of defence.
But its experience many not offer much comfort for U.S. and British
soldiers facing the threat of a concerted Iraq suicide bombing campaign.
Israel says that although it prevents many attacks, it is impossible to
stop every suicide bomber.
"In this business, no matter how hard you try and how good your
intelligence is, there is no 100 percent success," said Professor Zeev
Maoz, head of the School of Government and Policy at Tel Aviv University.
Hemi Shalev, a political commentator with the Israeli newspaper Maariv,
said: "From their experience over the past two years, every Israeli
citizen can say: 'Welcome to Hell'."
His words were highlighted by a suicide bombing in Israel on Sunday
which rocked a cafe in the Mediterranean coastal city of Netanya north of
Tel Aviv, wounding at least 20 people.
INTELLIGENCE IS THE KEY
The militant Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have killed
hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings since the 1990s. It is hard to
predict who will carry out such attacks or when.
Men and women, the old and young, civilians and militants have taken
part on suicide attacks. Some have worn a disguise.
Some have blown themselves in crowded places or on buses in Israel.
Others have detonated their explosives at checkpoints or near Israeli
troops, as one attacker did during Israel's siege of the West Bank city of
Jenin a year ago.
Israel's main defensive measures are the army roadblocks which are now
dotted across the West Bank, sealing off whole cities, towns and villages
and isolating large tracts of land.
Israel has also fenced off the Gaza Strip, a Hamas stronghold, and is
building a fence roughly along the "green line" that has separated it from
the West Bank since it occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle
East war.
Security is tight in Israel itself, where entrances to shopping malls,
restaurants and other public places are guarded.
"Israel has developed a number of procedures which by and large have
worked well over the last two years. But the key to detecting suicide
bombings is intelligence and this is something on which the United States
can learn a great deal from Israel," Maoz said.
"They have to try to build human intelligence links into the cities and
the Iraqi army's command and control centres because that presumably is
the origin of suicide planning. They'll have to do it quickly. It's not
impossible but it's a difficult job."
U.S. officials and some U.S. and British soldiers in Iraq said they
were taking the threat in their stride.
"We are always aware of that sort of threat but our soldiers have been
dealing with this kind of threat in Northern Ireland for years," Major
John Cotterill, of the Irish Guards, said at a checkpoint outside the
besieged Iraqi city of Basra.
Other soldiers were more nervous over the threat of a concerted
campaign of suicide attacks by Iraq.
"If I see a private vehicle coming up the road, I'm going to shoot at
it," said a U.S. marine in central Iraq. Making clear his priority was to
stay alive, he said: "Call me crazy, call me whatever, but call tomorrow
for lunch." |
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