Israeli forces raid Gaza hotel

Six hundred Israeli soldiers raided a Gaza Strip hotel today to remove about 150 Jewish extremists who barricaded themselves inside several weeks ago to protest Israel’s planned Gaza pullout.

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 in riot gear went room-to-room to remove the squatters who had holed up inside, stockpiling food and putting barbed-wire around the hotel. Some left peacefully when asked, while others were dragged out by their arms and legs. No-one resisted violently, but several of the squatters burned tyres in protest, and smoke billowed from the Palm Beach Hotel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel has been putting intense pressure on the Palestinian Authority to rein in militants ahead of its planned withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements this summer.

Its action against the pullout opponents today was a test of its ability to control its own extremists – and officials hoped the hotel raid would deter others seeking to disrupt the pullout.

The army said in a statement that because of the recent violence, “the head of the southern command ... signed a closure order preventing non-residents from entering the Gaza Strip.”

Jewish extremists yesterday clashed with both Israeli security forces and Palestinian civilians, severely wounding a Palestinian. Settlers and soldiers also clashed over the weekend.

“In the past day there has been another serious escalation of extremist activity,” an army statement said. ”There is intelligence information that more extremist groups are moving toward the Gaza Strip with the intention of strengthening their friends and to escalate the provocative acts.”

The army sealed off the Jewish settlements, preventing residents from travelling between the towns.

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.

Security forces arrested some of the pullout opponents and loaded others onto buses. Protesters shouted at the soldiers when they pulled the women out of the hotel, yelling, “Don’t touch the women.”

The extremists had prepared nails, petrol, tyres and other materials to use in a planned last-stand against the army. But at a meeting before today’s raid, the squatters decided not to resist because reinforcements they expected from outside Gaza were prevented from arriving, leaving them with what they said was not enough people to fight.

In the end, there were five or six security officers for each pullout opponent, and the operation to remove them was finished within about 10 minutes.

Gaza’s Jewish settlers protested against the army’s decision to close off the area.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, a group of about 50 Gaza pullout opponents blocked a main road, a day after hundreds of protesters shut down several main highways throughout the country.

In an interview published today, 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. “The country’s citizens must understand this danger, and every measure must be taken to end this rampaging.”

Extremists clashed with soldiers and Palestinians before being evicted from a house they commandeered on the Gaza sea shore Wednesday.

During the violence a Palestinian youth was seriously wounded when some of the Jewish youths cornered him, throwing stones at him and beating him unconscious. The incident was caught on film and sparked widespread condemnation across Israel.

Declaring Gaza a closed military area allows the army and police to remove anyone without a resident permit, making it easier for the security forces to control the area. Officials had said they reserved the right to seal off Gaza, saying the decision to do so would depend on the level of unrest.

The clash in Gaza yesterday showed that a handful of violent extremists could change the nature of Sharon’s ”disengagement” plan, from unarmed soldiers dragging protesting but otherwise peaceful settlers from their homes, to violent clashes, possibly with firearms, between security forces and extremists bent on thwarting the evacuation any way they can. Disengagement, or Israel’s withdrawal from all Gaza settlements and four West Bank settlements, is set to begin in mid-August.

“The battle now is not over the disengagement plan, but over the image and future of Israel and under no circumstances can we allow a lawless gang to try take control of life in Israel,” Sharon said.

Lawmaker Yossi Sarid of the dovish Meretz Party accused the police of not doing enough to prevent the violence in Gaza.

“What a pathetic country that the prime minister has to give an order to apprehend those who carried out a lynch,” Sarid told Israel Radio. “Is there any one in the army or in the police.... Who can explain why they were not arrested at the scene,” he said.

Settler leaders also condemned the incident, saying the youths were from a violent fringe group and did not represent the settler movement. “There is no connection between Judaism and those who carried out this,” said Shaul Yahalom, a lawmaker from the National Religious Party.