Israeli tanks and troops launched a major overnight raid into the Gaza Strip as Jewish New Year celebrations began with security forces on maximum alert amid fears of a Palestinian bomb attack.
Just hours after the two-day new year holiday began at sundown on Friday, a large Israeli infantry force backed up by dozens of tanks rolled into the central Gaza Strip area of Deir el-Balah, Palestinian security sources said.
About 40 tanks and armoured troop carriers took up positions in Deir el-Balah overnight after entering the town from three different directions and moved into an adjacent refugee settlement.
Troops raiding houses in the area arrested Maher Bashir, a militant of Islamic Jihad, the radical movement responsible for a series of anti-Israeli attacks in the occupied territories and suicide attacks in Israel, the sources said. The troops also occupied a police post in the town.
The operation was confirmed by Israeli military sources who described it as a temporary incursion, saying the army had no intention of re-occupying the area.
As Israel prepared on Friday to celebrate a string of holidays surrounding the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, its security forces went on maximum alert, fearing new attacks.
That fear was borne out on Thursday when police intercepted a van laden with 600kg of explosives which could have killed hundreds of people. The van had been driven from the West Bank into northern Israel.
The Israeli press said on Friday the vigilant security forces had thwarted what could have been the deadliest attack in the country’s history.
The army also arrested members of the radical Islamist group Hamas near Nablus in the northern West Bank on Thursday as they were plotting a New Year suicide bombing, military officials said.
The country has been placed on maximum alert, with police and troop reinforcements deployed in the major cities and mobile checkpoints set up. Particular attention has been focused on synagogues, holiday resorts and along the boundary with the West Bank.
The army banned Israeli citizens from moving in the West Bank, even in areas under Israeli control, and recalled the ban on them entering Palestinian autonomous zones, most of which have been reoccupied by the army.
”Absolutely everything must be done for the holidays to pass off well,” said Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
”The motivation for terrorist organisations is at its highest,” another top security official told Israeli newspapers.
The head of the Israeli police said there were no reports of specific threats but said the police were making their own assessment of the zones most at risk.
The New Year holiday marks the start of a series of Jewish festivals, with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on September 16 and Sukkot, the feast of the tabernacles marking the Jews’ Biblical departure from Egypt, on September 21.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army on Friday absolved itself of blame in the killings of a dozen Palestinian civilians in the last two weeks, in an internal inquiry carried out at the demand of Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
”The findings reveal that the standing open fire orders, used in the three incidents, were appropriate,” the army said in a statement on the probe into three separate incident that drew sharp criticism of the army.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Friday ruled out any immediate pullback of his forces occupying Palestinian self-rule areas of Hebron, as proposed in a stalled security cooperation plan with the Palestinians.
An Israeli pullback from the southern West Bank city ”is not on the agenda,” Sharon said in an interview with Israeli public radio. – Sapa-AFP