U.S. gives Israel a large new camp

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CAMP NACHSHONIM, Israel, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- The United States Tuesday delivered a sprawling storage base it has built for the Israeli army.

The base, Nachshonim, will store equipment for an Israeli armored division.

Nachshonim, which covers almost 400 acres, is the third base the United States has built for Israel under an agreement reached during the 1998 Wye River talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Israel then undertook to turn West Bank areas to the Palestinian Authority and the Clinton administration undertook to provide $1.2 billion to implement the agreement. That included several camps to replace facilities Israel would be vacating in the West Bank.

The United States has since delivered a training base for Israel's paratroop brigade opposite the southern West Bank, another for the Golani infantry brigade opposite the northwestern West Bank, and Tuesday it delivered the storage facility for the Idan reserve division east of Tel Aviv.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers managed the $127 million project. Its 210 buildings include specialized storage facilities to control humidity and dust levels so they would be ready to deploy on short notice, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet said.

Israel's army is based on a standing force of career personnel and recruits, and on a sizeable system of reserve units that could be deployed in quick notice.

A few smaller projects are still underway and the Corps of Engineers is adding facilities at the training bases, according to its chief representative in Israel, LTC John Rovero.

Israel has already pulled its paratroop and Golani basic training bases out of the West Bank and will now move stores that were located near Jerusalem and in southern Israel, Israeli defense sources said.

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(This report passed the Israeli military censor)