Army soldiers Wednesday night arrested 21 wanted Arab terrorists in Shechem, Kalkilya, Tulkarm and Ramallah. The counterterrorist operation in Shechem took place despite the deployment of hundreds of armed Palestinian Authority special forces, trained by the United States.

The PA and the Bush administration have claimed the forces' presence has returned law and order to the city, but the special forces, termed "policemen," do not operate in the middle of the night and generally restrict activities to catching criminals and traffic offenders.

Elsewhere, soldiers at the Golan Heights border caught a Syrian infiltrator and are returning him to the country through United Nations forces. He was unarmed and apparently had no intentions to carry out a terrorist attack.