Israel Police Bomb Disposal Unit

The bomb-disposal apparatus operates nationwide, with units assigned across police districts.[1] Personnel are police officers who completed combat service in the Israel Defense Forces before undergoing demanding specialist training at the Israel Police School of Bomb Disposal, and they serve in long-term positions that allow them to accumulate deep operational experience.[1]

The Negev police sub-district unit, for example, has approximately 16 bomb technicians. When a mass-casualty ordnance event creates dozens of simultaneous sites, technicians from other parts of Israel are deployed to assist.[2] During the al-Aqsa intifada, the head of all Israel National Police bomb-disposal units — Brigadier General (Ret.) Shaike Horowitz, who joined the police in 1981 after military service in the Combat Engineers — led a nationwide force of 450 bomb technicians.[3]

Chief Superintendent Michael Cardach held the position of deputy commander of the division in the Israel Police Operations Department as of 2006, when he presented its structure, missions, and activities at an international homeland-security conference.[4] Chief Inspector Raz Manor was subsequently identified as commander of the Negev sub-district bomb-disposal unit.[2]

The apparatus maintains specialist laboratories where fragments and remnants recovered at incident scenes are analyzed to characterize threats and refine future operational responses.[2] Senior Staff Sergeant Sharon Ben Ezra described a system that continually studies threats inside and outside Israel and disseminates resulting knowledge to bomb technicians throughout the country when a new threat emerges.[2]

The Israel Police History Department dates the establishment of the National Bomb Disposal Squad to 1974, when the government decided to assign the Israel Police responsibility for public security and the force assumed significant national-security functions alongside traditional policing.[5] A scholarly history identifies Government Decision 411 of April 1, 1975, as the formal legal transfer of responsibility for internal security and describes the subsequent establishment of a bomb-disposal apparatus and the YAMAM counterterrorism unit.[6] The official police history also lists the Operations Division and Israel Civil Guard among the formations created during this transition.[5]

A 1971 National Library of Israel archival record — titled "Explosive and terrorist armament was found and confiscated by the local police" — documents that Israeli police were handling explosive-related incidents before the squad's formal establishment, suggesting that operational necessity preceded institutional structure.[7] Similarly, an October 1967 headline from the American Jewish World, preserved in the same archive, reads "Live Bomb in Jerusalem Cinema Detonated in Open," indicating that bomb incidents in Israeli cities long predated the squad's creation.[8]

From 1981 to 1989, Shlomo Aharonishky commanded the Israel Police Bomb Disposal Division.[9] During his tenure, he expanded the division, founded its dedicated training school, and initiated formal international cooperation between the Israel Police and bomb units in other countries.[9]

The unit is an operational arm of the Israel Police that responds to suspected hostile-terror and criminal bomb incidents.[10] Its work includes neutralizing vehicles suspected of being booby-trapped, suspicious objects believed to be explosive devices, and suspicious mail.[10]

At an incident scene, the unit's principal task is to determine whether anything could endanger the public and then act to prevent an explosion or further harm.[1] Officers search for and remove hazards, neutralize explosive devices, assist rescue forces, and enter collapsed buildings and rubble to help extract civilians.[1] Israeli bomb squads are also routinely summoned when unattended items are discovered; such items are known in Hebrew as a hefetz hashud, meaning a suspicious object.[11]

The range of ordnance the unit handles is broad: unexploded ordnance, interceptor fragments, missile and rocket remnants, warheads weighing hundreds of kilograms, cluster bombs, combined missiles, improvised explosive devices, oxygen cylinders, acids, toxic gases from engines, and rocket parts.[1] Officers emphasize that objects resembling harmless pieces of metal may contain toxic, dangerous, or explosive materials and must be treated carefully at the scene rather than approached by civilians.[1]

At bombing scenes, the division of labor within the broader police response is defined: bomb-disposal personnel investigate the epicenter of an attack and analyze the nature of the explosive charge, while patrol officers secure the perimeter and divert traffic, and forensic personnel locate victims and conduct identification procedures.[6] Rapid victim identification serves several purposes simultaneously — enabling burial in accordance with Jewish law, identifying a suicide attacker so investigators can trace the attacker's operators and determine whether another attack may be imminent, and restoring an urban site to normal function as quickly as possible.[6]

Bomb-disposal robots are central to the unit's operational safety.[12] The first police robot entered service in 1986 and was nicknamed "Bambi."[12] Robots can transmit real-time imagery to the technician's vehicle, handle explosive devices, collect suspicious items, and neutralize them by firing.[12]

A government publication describes a system in which cameras mounted on bomb-disposal robots transmit footage that is recorded when the vehicle's "Alarm" button is pressed.[9] Senior officers arriving after an incident has begun can review the footage to make command decisions, and the recorded material also supports post-incident debriefings and creates a documented database for training and refresher courses.[9] The Bomb Disposal Division's internal "backroom" teams developed and upgraded this and other anti-terrorism equipment and techniques over time.[9]

By 2024, however, the unit's robot fleet had aged severely. A document from the head of the bomb-disposal apparatus warned that the existing robots were 22 years old, relied on outdated analog technology, and had accumulated such wear that technicians had dismantled some units to keep others running — with the warning that no operational robots might remain at the beginning of 2025 without emergency funding.[12] The Israel Police subsequently approved an expedited purchase of new bomb-disposal robots at a reported cost of 90 million shekels.[12]

Within the bomb-disposal apparatus sits the Revidim Squad, described by the Israel Police as an elite non-conventional bomb-disposal team composed of the country's top bomb-disposal specialists.[13] The squad was established by Commander Nissim Levi, a former head of the Israel Police Bomb Disposal Department.[13] Members are selected on the basis of physical and technical qualifications, composure, decision-making ability, and analytical capacity.[13]

Revidim's operational domain is the non-conventional threat — devices that may contain chemical or biological agents — where remote robotic disruption, a common response to conventional devices, is not considered an option.[13] Specialists train with live chemical and biological agents to approximate the alertness and fine-motor demands of working in a heavy chemical suit, breathing apparatus, and thick gloves.[13] Within seconds of encountering a device, they must assess the situation, consider available options, select the least harmful course of action, and execute it; an apparently innocuous device containing a suspicious substance such as white powder may require immediate reassessment mid-action.[13] The squad's operational doctrine and specific training scenarios are classified.[13]

The broader Bomb Disposal Division was presented at a 2006 international homeland-security conference as part of Israel's capabilities for securing crowded public locations such as shopping malls and airports.[4]

Alongside the national civilian police apparatus, the Israel Border Police maintains its own bomb-disposal capability.[9] A government publication described Border Guard operations in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza under the period term "Administered Territories." It stated that Border Guard bomb-disposal units were stationed throughout those areas to locate and disarm bombs and other incendiary devices and to conduct security checks of suspicious vehicles and objects.[9] These units operated within a broader internal-security structure encompassing six geographically divided area commands and specialist units trained for assigned tasks.[9]

The Border Police's organizational expansion followed the Israel Police's assumption of greater responsibility for domestic security as terrorist attacks inside Israel increased.[14] The resulting changes included the establishment of a Bomb Disposal Unit alongside the National Counter Terrorism Unit, the Negotiation Unit, and the volunteer-based Civil Guard.[14]

The al-Aqsa intifada placed sustained demands on Israel Police bomb-disposal personnel. Palestinian terrorists carried out hundreds of suicide bombings during the conflict, and bomb technicians were deployed throughout it.[3] Dangerous conditions at attack scenes went beyond the initial blast: in one 2001 incident at Camp 80, an active explosive belt remained on an attacker's body after the initial explosion; in another at the Check Post Junction the same year, an injured attacker attempted to reactivate a partially detonated belt.[6]

In May 2023, following a wave of rocket fire from Gaza, Superintendent Raz Manur's 24-member Negev team worked around the clock in Ofakim, Netivot, and Beersheba, identifying rocket and Iron Dome interceptor fragments at more than 100 sites.[15] Police separately identified approximately 300 potential impact sites across southern Israel. Bomb-disposal robots and a controlled explosion were used to destroy a dud rocket near Kibbutz Kerem Shalom.[15] Israel Police spokesperson Dean Elsdunne warned the public that rocket remnants could contain cancer-causing substances as well as explosive hazards.[15]

Since October 7, 2023, the Negev sub-district unit has operated around the clock responding to terrorist explosive devices and removing ordnance originating from Iran and Yemen, including ballistic missiles, missiles carrying submunitions, and unmanned aerial vehicles.[2] In one barrage described by the unit commander, a missile carrying submunitions scattered fragments across more than 70 sites in Beersheba and the surrounding Negev, requiring assistance from technicians based elsewhere in Israel.[2] The unit suffered a personal loss when colleague Yigal Iluz — a resident of Ofakim who went out to defend his home on October 7 — was killed; technicians continued working around the clock in the aftermath.[2]

In September 2026, Tel Aviv District bomb-disposal officers worked at missile and fragment impact sites among collapsed buildings, crushed vehicles, and shrapnel-covered streets.[16] The officers stated that each impact site requires a different technical response and that they train throughout the year for the range of munitions they may encounter.[16]

The Israel Police bomb-disposal apparatus has engaged in international exchanges since the 1980s, when Commander Aharonishky initiated formal cooperation between the division and bomb units in other countries.[9] In September 2013, Israeli National Police bomb-squad personnel conducted field training with bomb-squad officers from cities along the U.S.-Mexico border, focusing on techniques and tactics for dealing with improvised explosive devices.[17] Participants visited a West Bank military outpost with the Israeli National Police bomb squad and an Israeli port of entry to study counter-explosives and counter-IED inspection procedures.[17]

More broadly, the Israel Police has participated in international law-enforcement exchanges covering counterterrorism, forensic science, bomb disposal, community policing, and leadership training.[17] Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich stated that such exchanges increased the knowledge and professionalism of law-enforcement personnel on both sides and created valuable personal relationships.[17]

The first female police bomb technician documented in the sources is Inbal Gawi, who completed the Israel Police's ten-month bomb-disposal course in September 2011.[10] Out of 380 applicants, she graduated alongside 14 men.[10] The course combined operational training, theoretical studies, and field apprenticeship.[10] Gawi subsequently began serving as a bomb technician at the Givatayim police station; she noted that commanders held her to the same standards as male trainees, though she felt the additional burden of having to prove herself as the program's first female graduate.[10] Before joining the police, she had served as a combat soldier in the Caracal battalion.[10]

In April 2016, Master Sergeant Alex Pekerman became the first female bomb-disposal specialist in the Jerusalem Police and one of only two female police explosive-disposal specialists in Israel at that time.[18] She joined the Jerusalem team after earning degrees in biology and geology, and her duties included examining suspicious objects and vehicles, searching terrorists and their possessions, checking attack locations for additional devices, and examining routes used by attackers.[18] Her father had also served as an explosives-disposal officer.[19]

The unit's publicly communicated safety guidance instructs civilians never to touch interceptor or missile remnants.[1] Anyone who observes unexploded ordnance or a suspicious piece of metal is directed to call the police emergency center at 100 immediately, as remnants may contain toxic substances or explosives.[1] Reports indicate that members of the public have been injured after handling such fragments by hand, underscoring the importance of the guidance.[1] In the terminology used across Israeli public life, an unattended item prompting a bomb-squad callout is described as a hefetz hashud — a suspicious object.[11]