Pipe bomb found on terrorist. Jerusalem Post.

Border Police at the Tapuah Junction foiled a suicide bombing on Friday. They saw a young man wearing a heavy coat on a hot day and decided to investigate. The 20-year-old Palestinian man from Nablus had twelve pipe bombs under his coat and had intended to strike the soldiers at the checkpoint.

Checkpoints were instituted as a result of an increase in terror attacks from the West Bank. After the second Intifada, the uprising between 2000-2005, the IDF created many more checkpoints. Due to a decrease in terrorism, the IDF has decreased the number of checkpoints in the West Bank in the last five years. Essentially, more terror attacks leads to more checkpoints and fewer attacks leads to fewer checkpoints.

Checkpoints unfortunately affect many peaceful Palestinians. It can take up to 3 hours for a Palestinian to travel 25 minutes to work. This is an unfortunate reality for the hundreds of thousands of peaceful Palestinians who want to live a normal life. Traveling in ambulances to the hospital is no different because of the 2002 incident and many others when terrorists attempted to transport bombs and other weapons into Israel.

When confronted with the hot button issue of “should Israel take down all checkpoints”, remind people that checkpoints are the main defense against terror attacks. Remember that checkpoints also make life very difficult for many people and that during a peaceful time; they would not have to exist. They only exist to protect the civilians in Israel. If terrorism completely stopped, there would be no checkpoints.

For further reading, check out- http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Border-Patrol-stops-terrorist-en-route-to-suicide-bombing-at-Tapuah-junction-354884

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/bomb-found-in-red-crescent-ambulance-1.49189