Israel stops a suicide bombing: an account from the Associated Press reports,

.... confrontation began about 4 p.m. when soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus received intelligence a bomber was there. They shut down the crossing and began searching hundreds of people there, the military said.

Suddenly [a teenager], wearing an oversized red jersey, approached [soldiers at an Israeli checkpoint].

"We saw that he had something under his shirt," said Lt. Tamir Milrad. The soldiers took cover behind concrete barricades, pointed their guns at the teenager and ordered him to stop.



On their orders, he took off his jersey, revealing a bulky gray bomb vest.

"He told us he didn't want to die. He didn't want to blow up," Milrad said.

The soldiers sent a small robot to hand [the teenager] scissors to cut off the vest, an incident captured in exclusive Associated Press Television News footage.

The teenager cut off part of the vest and struggled with the rest. "I don't how to get this off," he said in frustration before successfully removing it.

Soldiers ordered him to take off his undershirt and pull down his jeans to make sure he had no other weapons. Then they arrested him.

Sappers blew up the vest, which the army said was an 18-pound bomb...

The family of the teenager, identified as Hussam Abdo, said he was gullible and easily manipulated.

"He doesn't know anything, and he has the intelligence of a 12 year old," said his brother, Hosni.

Incidents like this support the rationale for assasinating Sheikh Yassin I cited a few posts ago: while the supply of confused teenagers may be endless, the real guilty party is the bureacracy of clerics and terrorists which trains and equips them. Israel is right to target members of this bureaucracy in its attemts to fight terrorism.

Update: I like this quote from Haaretz, also cited by David Bernstein at the Volokh Conpsiracy: "Abdu told soldiers of his dream of receiving 70 virgins in heaven, which his dispatchers had promised him, and said that he had been tempted by the promise of sexual relations with the virgins. He said that he had been bullied at school for his poor academic performance and that he had wanted "to be a hero."