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JERUSALEM: Snipers posted on rooftops, entire city
blocks sealed off, thousands of police on duty, Israel and the
Palestinian Authority are going on full alert for US President
George W. Bush’s visit.
For weeks, Israeli and
Palestinian officials have grappled with how to ensure the safety of
the leader of the world’s biggest superpower in densely populated
urban centers in one of the most volatile regions on the planet.
Israeli police say 10,500
officers and border guards will be on duty and all intelligence
services in the security-obsessed country placed on high alert for
operation “Clear Sky” when Air Force One touches down on
Wednesday.
On the Palestinian side, 4,000
law enforcement officials will be deployed in Ramallah alone, with
additional personnel in the city of Bethlehem, where according to
the Bible Jesus was born.
Streets and whole city blocks are
to be closed in Jerusalem and the West Bank capital of Ramallah
during the Wednesday to Friday visit, the first by an American
president in more than nine years.
Underscoring security concerns,
an American member of al-Qaeda urged Islamist militants to target
Bush during his trip, saying he should be welcomed “not by flowers
and applause, but with bombs and car bombs.”
In Ramallah, the area around the
muqata, the government compound where Bush will meet Palestinian
President Mahmud Abbas, “will be practically under curfew” with
streets closed to vehicles and pedestrians, a security official
said.
Bush, who visited Jordan in
November 2006 and has made several trips to Iraq, is due to spend
most of his time in Jerusalem and will also meet Abbas in West
Bank’s Ramallah and visit Bethlehem.
Outside Abbas’s headquarters in
Ramallah, public workers have planted trees and flowers and prepared
a landing pad for the helicopters due to whisk in the American
president for his meetings.
Residents of Jerusalem, Ramallah
and Bethlehem will face checkpoints, streets closed to cars and
pedestrian traffic and swarms of security personnel.
Route One, the main highway
leading into Jerusalem from the east, will be closed for an hour
shortly after Bush’s arrival to allow the unhindered passage of
the convoy of his entourage.
The president is coming with his
own plane, helicopters, transport planes and 20 armored limousines,
and, some 400 American security personnel are due to arrive with
him, as well as 200 White House staff, it said. In addition, 15 US
canine teams trained in explosive detection will be on hand, the
Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported.
In Jerusalem itself, blocks
around the historic King David Hotel where the president is staying
will be closed, with snipers due on rooftops and a balloon with
cameras and night-vision hovering above, local media reported.
Robots were even sent into the
sewers below the King David to check the subterranean area; the
Jerusalem Post quoted a hotel official as saying.
Bush’s entourage is expected to
take over all of the King David’s 230-plus rooms, as well as
nearly 800 others in the city.
People who live near the King
David, scene of a deadly 1946 bombing by an underground Zionist
group seeking to overthrow British rule in Palestine, are to receive
special tags from the Shin Beth internal security service to access
their homes, according to media.
Bush is only the second US
president to visit the Palestinian territories, although he will not
be going to the Gaza Strip, now run by the Islamist militant group
Hamas, unlike his predecessor Bill Clinton in December 1998.
--AFP
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