Palestinian security accused of arming terrorists

Palestinian security forces were accused of supplying arms to militant groups to attack Israelis, after anti-tank missiles, grenades, a bomb laboratory and a weapons workshop were found in a raid on a security compound in Gaza.

After yesterday’s three-hour overnight raid left the compound in ruins, Palestinians denied the claim by the Israeli army, saying the base was evacuated a year ago and had stood empty since.

Israeli forces struck again last night, with helicopters and tanks targeting a building in a sparsely-populated part of Gaza City. Witnesses and security officials said helicopters and tanks fired at the area. There was no word of casualties.

The raids came as Israel’s dovish Labour Party, trailing badly in polls ahead of a January 28 general election, prepared to vote tomorrow to choose a leader. The party has lost considerable support in the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks it pioneered and two years of bloody violence.

Also yesterday, an Israeli woman was shot dead by a Palestinian gunman near the West Bank settlement of Rimmonim, north east of Jerusalem.

In the Gaza raid, Israeli helicopters and tanks fired on the Palestinian Preventive Security force complex for the first time in the current conflict, demolishing several of the 11 buildings in the compound. No serious injuries were reported.

Troops moved in and found dozens of mortar shells and grenades, three rocket propelled grenades, several anti-tank missiles and a Palestinian-manufactured Qassam missile in the complex, along with welding equipment and intelligence materials, said a senior Israeli officer in Gaza, Brig Gen Israel Ziv.

Defence minister Shaul Mofaz said the raid showed the ”tight connection between the security forces of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian terror groups”.

Ziv said Israeli forces had decided to strike the complex following the recent arrest of a top official, Yusuf Mukdad, on suspicion of planning attacks against Israelis. After the arrest, he said, “it became clear that they produced a large amount of weaponry and gave them to Islamic Jihad and Hamas and others”.

Rashid Abu Shabak, head of preventive security in Gaza, toured the remains of the demolished compound and denied it was a weapons factory.

“Every Palestinian security (compound) has its own garage to fix cars and if (they) consider this garage a factory to produce weapons, this is nothing new,” he said. “Last night’s aggression was not only against my headquarters, but against all the Palestinian people and against the peace process.”

Gaza has so far been spared the large-scale military operations in which Israel has taken control of most West Bank Palestinian population centres, in retaliation for bloody terror attacks. However, Israeli leaders have said that militant groups operate unfettered in Gaza, and the Israeli military would confront them at some point.

Israel, meanwhile, continued to consider a response to an ambush in the West Bank city of Hebron on Friday, in which gunmen fired on soldiers after they escorted Jewish worshippers home to their settlement, killing 12 soldiers and security guards.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reportedly considering linking a line of Jewish enclaves in the city with the settlement, Kiryat Arba – a move that could mean uprooting many Palestinians. The area is in a part of Hebron already under Israeli security control.

“What the prime minister asked be examined is the creation of a Jewish area that in the end is meant to give more security to the Jewish residents but a great reduction in the Arab population that will be under our control,” Cabinet minister Dan Naveh, a Sharon ally, said yesterday.