Stepped-up security on main roads in West Bank
The Israeli army has set up dozens of new video cameras along Road 443, one of the two ways for Israelis to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as a deterrent to Palestinian rock and Molotov cocktail throwing. There are stepped-up army patrols on the road, and enhanced intelligence gathering to stop attacks.
“The Palestinians understood that we are very determined not to let them do what they want,” Lieutenant Colonel Elad Edry told The Media Line. “The army is very professional and very strong, and we have proved it. They got the message that they won’t succeed.”
Edry is the battalion commander of Kedem, a Home Front Command battalion responsible for the security of Israelis who drive on this road that passes through the West Bank. Most of the area around the road lies in what the 1993 Oslo Accords designated as Area “B,” the part of the West Bank that is under Palestinian administrative control and Israeli security control.
Along with defensive measures, the army is also trying to appeal directly to Palestinian village leaders to encourage them to keep the area quiet. Army officers go into nearby villages at least once a month, Edry said, and meet with school principals and businessmen. “One of my captains got an appointment with the principal of the high school and he told him, ‘we don’t want to get into your village and we don’t want to hurt them (stone throwers). Please make sure they don’t get out of classes and go near the roads,’” Edry said. “Then, years ago, we didn’t think about talking to the Palestinians. These days the army tries to talk and not only make it safe using guns.”
According to Israeli government figures, in the past 15 months there have been 167 stabbing attacks and 89 attempted stabbings, 116 shootings, 48 car ramming attacks, and one bus bombing.
Forty-two people have been killed in the attacks, and more than 600 injured. During the same period, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed. Israel says that most of them were attackers, while the Palestinians insist that a large number of them were civilians.
In the past few months, the situation has calmed down. Yet, Edry and others say they maintain a high state of readiness and are prepared for any attack. At the Bell checkpoint on Route 443, five soldiers check Palestinians coming from villages who want to get onto the road. Palestinians need a special permit to use this road. In the past 15 months, there have been five attacks at this checkpoint – two stabbings, two car rammings and a shooting. Two of the soldiers stationed here were wounded.
Some of the troops guarding at Bell are female combat soldiers. “I came to the army with the thought that I wanted to do as much as I could to defend the country and do everything a man does,” Adi Karten, 22, who has nearly completed her army service told The Media Line. “It built me and even created a new me. I look at things differently. I am happy for every minute I’ve been here.”
Photo: Felice Friedson/The Media Line
Karten has been assigned as Edry’s communications expert for the past 15 months. She said the most difficult moments of her service came on the day in November, 2015, when Israeli soldier Ziv Mizrachi was stabbed and killed at a gas station just north of the checkpoint. She arrived with Edry just minutes after the attack.
The army also coordinates with the police, where officials say they have seen an increase in weapons factories in the West Bank. “We have seen an increase in improvised weapons that are being made in Judea and Samaria,” Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Media Line, using the Biblical names for the West Bank. “We have been trying to get to those workshops where weapons are being made.”
Edry says a favored weapon is the shabaria, a curved knife or dagger. He says attackers, both men and women, aim at a soldier’s neck, knowing they will be wearing a flak jacket which would protect the rest of their upper body.
These knives are illegal to purchase, but can be found in some stores in Jerusalem’s Old City.
“We’ve seen attacks where the Palestinians have walked into the Old City of Jerusalem,” Rosenfeld told The Media Line. “They haven’t been armed and then they bought a knife near Damascus Gate. We have to have the right units at the right place at the right time because there’s no complete intelligence.”
The head of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said on Tuesday that more than 400 terror attacks were thwarted by Israel during the course of 2016.