Palestinians strike after Israeli raid
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) – Palestinians went on strike across the
Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Wednesday and vowed a wave of
demonstrations against Israel’s seizure of the leader of a
militant group from a Palestinian jail.
Israeli security forces were on high alert after Ahmed
Saadat’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
and the Islamist militant group Hamas promised retaliation.
Israeli forces grabbed Saadat after tanks and bulldozers
tore apart Jericho jail on Tuesday. The Jewish state said the
raid sent a powerful message to Hamas, which is forming a
Palestinian government after winning elections in January.
Israel has accused Saadat of involvement in the 2001
killing of an Israeli cabinet minister and said it had no
choice but to act after the United States and Britain, citing
security concerns, withdrew monitors supervising his
incarceration.
Political rivals and newspapers in Israel agreed the
10-hour operation was a success, a boost for the security
credentials of interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of a
March 28 general election his centrist Kadima party is expected
to win.
In Gaza, shops were shuttered in protest at the Israeli
operation and many children had to return home after they
arrived at closed schools. Shops in key West Bank towns were
also closed.
Palestinian militants said three remaining foreigners
kidnapped in Gaza on Tuesday in response to the Israeli raid
had been released.
Militants said the three journalists, two French nationals
and a South Korean, were being handed over to political leaders
in Gaza. They were among nine foreigners snatched in
Palestinian areas. The six others were freed soon after they
were taken.
“NO COMPROMISE”
“There is no compromise when it comes to security and we
will deal out justice to murderers,” Defense Minister Shaul
Mofaz, commenting on the prison raid, said on Israel Radio.
Kayed al-Ghoul, a senior PFLP leader in Gaza, said the
group “will not stand handcuffed against the Israeli pirating
and kidnapping of comrade Saadat.”
The raid, in which a Palestinian guard and a prisoner were
killed, dealt another blow to moderate Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas, already shaken by Hamas’s election win. Hamas is
sworn to Israel’s destruction.
“This incident weakens president Abbas and the pragmatists
and moderates and strengthens Hamas and extremists because
Israel will not respect agreements and pursues policies of
dictating facts on the ground,” independent Palestinian
lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi told Reuters.
Saadat, 51, would be put on trial, Israeli officials said.
He was sent to Jericho jail in 2002 under an
internationally-brokered deal that ended an Israeli siege that
year of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s compound in
Ramallah, where the PFLP leader was taking refuge.
“They were in a prison of recreation and rest. Not a jail
in the full sense of the word,” Mofaz said, referring to Saadat
and other PFLP men accused in the killing of cabinet minister
Rehavam Zeevi.
The PFLP, one of the smaller groups waging a Palestinian
uprising, said it assassinated Zeevi, a far-right former
general, to avenge the killing of its top leader, Abu Ali
Mustafa, in an Israeli missile strike.
Israel’s seizure of the gray-haired Saadat followed
suggestions by Hamas and Abbas that Saadat might be freed. It
launched the prison operation minutes after British and
Americans monitors cleared out.
The European Union criticized the raid but said it might be
unable to deliver aid to Palestinians if attacks on EU property
and kidnappings of Westerners did not stop.
As Israel’s election campaign entered its home stretch, a
poll released by Israel’s Channel 1 television late on Tuesday
showed Olmert’s Kadima party winning 42-43 seats in the
120-member legislature, a rise of several seats from recent
newspaper surveys. The poll was conducted before the raid.
Kadima’s main challengers, the left-wing Labour party and
the rightist Likud, were well behind.
(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in Ramallah and Ori Lewis
in Jerusalem)