Israeli troops rout Jewish extremists in Gaza
The raid took place hours after the army sealed off Gaza, declaring it a "closed military zone" to prevent Jewish extremists from going in following several violent confrontations between settlers and soldiers.
About 10 busloads of soldiers and paramilitary police went room-to-room to remove the squatters who had stockpiled food and surrounded the Palm Beach Hotel with barbed wire. Some squatters were carried out by soldiers, and arrests were reported.
In an interview yesterday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he ordered police to crack down on the extremists. "This bothers me exceptionally. This is an act of savagery, vulgarity and irresponsibility," Sharon told the Haaretz daily newspaper. "The country's citizens must understand this danger and every measure must be taken to end this rampaging."
Some of the extremists inside the Palm Beach Hotel belong to the outlawed Kach movement. The squatters were mostly from hard-line enclaves in the West Bank, not from Gaza settlements slated for evacuation.
One woman who was in the hotel with her husband, her seven-year-old son and a year-old baby wept in an interview with Israel Radio after she was removed from the hotel. "I lost my whole family in the Holocaust. What did we come here for? What did we build a family for, for what? For what?" the woman cried, the one-year-old in her arms. "I am begging you ... leave us here. We came to strengthen a strong nation."
The extremists had prepared nails, gasoline, tires and other materials to use in a planned last stand against the army. But at a meeting before Thursday's raid, the squatters decided not to resist because reinforcements they expected from outside Gaza were prevented from arriving, leaving them with too few people to fight.
In Jerusalem, meanwhile, a group of about 50 Gaza pull-out opponents blocked a main thoroughfare, a day after hundreds of protesters shut down several main highways throughout the country.
Extremists clashed with soldiers and Palestinians before being evicted from a house they commandeered on the Gaza seashore. A Palestinian youth was seriously wounded when some of the Jewish youths cornered him, threw stones and beat him unconscious. The incident was caught on film and sparked widespread condemnation across Israel.
In Amman, Jordan, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas met with top aides to lay out a strategy for reforms in the mainstream Fatah faction and resolve internal conflicts.
The meeting of the 16-member Fatah Central Committee is the first in more than five years. It took place in Jordan so the largest possible number of committee members could attend, including exiled leaders.
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