Van der Waals' Forces in Diamond Structures

[mysqlpress]

very often, most chemistry books claim that the dominant force helding the molecules together to a certain distance apart is van der Waals' forces, which is a kind of intermolecular forces; However, to investigate the forces microscopically, we found that the force is exactly electrostatic... Here I have a question.
diamond,having a giant covalent strucuture . is there any "van der Waals' forces" between the carbon atoms in the entire strucuture? or We ignore the existence because it is less dominant when compared with the directional, strong covalent bonds?

 

[Gokul43201]

Yes, there may be dispersion forces between the C-atoms, but these will be negligible compared to the strength of covalent bonding.

 

[mysqlpress]

Yes, there may be dispersion forces between the C-atoms, but these will be negligible compared to the strength of covalent bonding.

Thank you very much ^^