JERUSALEM (JTA) — Three Israeli Arabs were arrested on suspicion of operating a bomb-making factory for Islamic Jihad.

The laboratory is the first of its kind to be discovered inside Israel, according to a statement issued Monday by the Prime Minister's Office.

The three allegedly acquired materials for making explosives, which they planned to give a suicide bomber for use in an attack near an army base inside Israel.

But the suspects were arrested by Shin Bet agents and police several weeks ago before they made contact with the terrorist, the authorities said.

Israeli officers hide after terror threats

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Five Israeli police intelligence coordinators and their families were sent into hiding after they received terrorist threats.

The police chief for the West Bank and Gaza Strip said security had been stepped up for all intelligence coordinators in the territories, Israel Radio reported.

Zionists outdo Nazis, PLO officials charge

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Palestinian U.N. official said Zionism is worse than Nazism.

The Zionists have committed crimes that are "even worse than what was done by the Nazis," Nabil Ramlawi, the PLO representative to the United Nations in Geneva, said March 27 at a meeting of the U.N. Commission of Human Rights.

U.N. Watch, a watchdog body affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, condemned the remarks.

Ramlawi, who accused Israel of committing "genocide against Palestinians," asked why the world "has not yet eliminated New Zionist Nazism" and called the creation of Israel "a crime against humanity that continues today."

Jerusalem school rescued from terror

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli forces apprehended a Palestinian teenager who allegedly planned to carry out a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem boarding school, police officials disclosed Wednesday.

The 17-year-old Bethlehem-area resident, who was arrested several weeks ago, admitted to planning to target a boarding school in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.

Several days prior to the suspect's arrest, a routine army patrol discovered an explosives-packed suitcase near the road linking Jerusalem with settlements south of the capital.

The youth said he abandoned the suitcase there after he changed his mind about carrying out the attack.

Agent is acquitted in Rabin investigation

JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israeli undercover agent was acquitted of charges that he failed to prevent the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Avishai Raviv was acquitted Monday.

Raviv, a right-wing activist, was working for Israel's Shin Bet when Yigal Amir gunned down Rabin in November 1995.

Amir is serving a life sentence for assassinating Rabin.