Israel nabs suicide bombers, from Arafat's force, enroute to blow up school
By: Administrative Account | Source: Israel Insider
December 5, 2003 12:39PM EST

Wednesday morning Israelis were told via the media of a "hot" terror alert, the most urgent of 42 warnings of impending attacks. Road blocks were set up around northern Israel. Highways were closed, traffic was clogged.

After about an hour, the level of alert was reduced after consultations among security forces. But soon after, apparently in response to receiving more exact intelligence, the alert level was raise again and the pursuit intensified.

Hundreds of members of the security forces, including Shin Bet (Israel's equivalent of the FBI), elite army special forces and a police anti-terrorism SWAT unit pursued the bombers.

At 2 pm, an Israeli army unit surrounded the mosque in the village of Bardaleh, near Jenin in northern Samaria. 20 people were inside at the time. Following a siege, the terrorists surrendered, leading forces to the bomb belt, ready for use, they had concealed inside the mosque.

They told investigators that they had planned to attack the ORT high school in Yokneam, southeast of Haifa.

The terrorists, Munir Shkadeh Mohammed Rabiah, 23, from Gaza and Morad Zeitoun, 20, from Jenin, are both officers of the Palestinian national security forces, under the exclusive control of Arafat.

A security official told Channel One TV news that Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus had a few days ago ordered its operatives in Jenin to carry out attacks inside Israel.

A Shin Bet source said the two left Jenin in the morning and set out for Bardaleh where they planned to cross into Israel. "They told investigators that they had chosen the location because there is no security fence preventing them from entering Israel," the source said.

Another suicide bomber, also from Islamic Jihad, was arrested by security forces in a sweep of Jenin area Tuesday. Shin Bet reported that he planned to carry out a suicide bomb attack in Beit She'an. 17 terrorist in the Jihad organization, including the dispatcher of the bomber, were arrested. The resulting intelligence led to the capture of the bomber captured in Bardeleh.

In two other thwarted attacks, IDF troops neutralized a seven-kilogram (16 pound) bomb discovered by a Palestinian man near the settlement of Itamar in Samaria. On Tuesday, IDF forces prevented a terror attack when they found another large bomb close to Tulkarm, near the 1967 "green line" demarcation separating Israel from the administered territories.

"What may appear to some people to be a lull in Palestinian terror activity is actually a smokescreen for the continued efforts by these same terrorists to strike at innocent Israelis wherever and whenever they can," said David Baker, an official in the Prime Minister's Office, responding to the foiled attacks.

"The Israeli security forces continue to confront and foil terror attack after terror attack which attests to the unbending resolve of the Palestinian terror organizations to continue with their campaign of terror of which the Palestinian Authority does nothing to stop," Baker said.

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