Israeli troops, backed by tanks and helicopters, on Tuesday stormed a prison compound in the West Bank town of Jericho to seize militants held over the assassination of an Israeli minister.
The raid came minutes after British monitors were withdrawn from the prison and sparked a wave of violent demonstrations against British and United States targets and an ultimatum from militants for their nationals to leave immediately.
At least half a dozen hostages, most of them foreigners, were being held in the territory after the raid in the town of Jericho to thwart the release of militants held over the assassination of an Israeli minister five years ago.
The raid, which came minutes after British monitors were withdrawn from the prison, failed to persuade the top-wanted militants to surrender, and they instead remained in the prison compound amid an intensifying siege.
Amid security chaos that threatens to deal a further blow to the moribund peace process, four people, three of them foreigners, were kidnapped at gunpoint from a luxury Palestinian hotel on the Gaza City seafront.
Gunmen also kidnapped the local head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip in an apparent bid to force Israel to halt the Jericho raid.
A leftist militant group close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Che Guevara Brigades, said it had kidnapped two French women working for medical charity Medecins du Monde in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier, a Palestinian security guard was killed and 18 others wounded as gunfire rang out and explosions rocked the area after Israeli forces pushed into the compound that houses the prison in the usually peaceful desert-oasis town.
Bulldozers smashed through the compound as Israeli troops called through loudspeakers on Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the leftist PFLP, and his comrades to surrender.
Around a dozen half-naked men were brought out of the smoke-filled compound by Israeli troops amid intermittent explosions and tank fire. A Palestinian security source said guard Ibrahim Abu al-Amin was shot dead inside the compound by the Israeli troops.
The Palestinian Authority called for an immediate halt to the raid and the Islamist militant movement Hamas urged the international community to intervene.
A senior Israeli officer told reporters that the army would not negotiate with the wanted prisoners.
“It’s very simple, either they give in and get out on their own, or they will be killed,” he said.
But Saadat voiced defiance as he took refuge in one of the prison buildings along with fellow prisoners and some Palestinian security personnel.
“Our choice is to fight or to die. We will not surrender,” he told al-Jazeera television in a telephone interview.
Saadat and three other PFLP members have been jailed in Jericho, a prison under US and British supervision, since August 2002 after his militant faction claimed the 2001 killing of far-right Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Israeli Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said the raid was being undertaken to prevent the militants going free after Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas repeatedly voiced readiness to release them in recent weeks.
“This operation was ordered by the prime minister in the fight against terrorism. We are committed to the murderers of minister Rehavam Zeevi remaining behind bars,” he told public radio.
Two days ago, Israel’s second television channel reported that Israel was prepared to assassinate the four PFLP militants if they were released.
Mosques across Jericho called on citizens over loudspeakers to flock to the muqataa to protect the soldiers and prisoners inside the compound.
The operation drew a furious response from Hamas’s prime minister-designate Ismail Haniya, who slammed the “dangerous escalation” and warned Israel against any attempt on the life of Saadat and his comrades.
The withdrawal of the three British monitors, part of a team that normally also includes Americans, drew angry accusations of collusion from the Palestinians.
“For sure America and Britain co-ordinated with Israel in this aggression against our prisoners and against Jericho in general,” the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Aziz Dweik, told Agence France-Presse.
Outgoing Prime Minister, Ahmed Qorei, demanded immediate action by the two governments to protect the lives of the prisoners.
“I am shocked by this action that violates all agreements, particularly the American-British sponsored agreement,” he said.
“I call on the international community, mainly the US and Britain, which are responsible for the safety and protection of the prisoners, to stand up to their responsibility and to move immediately and seriously to avoid a catastrophe which directly endangers the lives of Mr Saadat and his colleagues.”
But a spokesperson for the British consulate general in east Jerusalem denied charges of collusion, insisting the decision had been taken solely for the monitors’ safety and had been communicated to both Israel and the Palestinians on March 8.
“We did not believe that the Palestinian Authority were taking the right steps to ensure safety down there,” she said, adding that there were concerns that the Britons might be caught up in an attempted breakout or other unrest.
“On March 8 we sent a letter to both Israel and the Palestinians saying that under the Ramallah agreement we could not secure the safety of our monitors.”
However, the explanation failed to prevent angry protests against British and US targets across the Palestinian territories.
In the Gaza Strip, hundreds of armed Palestinians stormed the British cultural centre and set fire to it, while militants from the PFLP tried to kidnap a US citizen before being stopped by the security forces, and armed men raided a US teaching office.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed offshoot of Abbas’s Fatah faction, warned all British and US nationals to leave the territories “immediately” on pain of an “unprecedented response”.
Britain advised nationals to leave Jericho and re-iterated a warning against all non-essential travel to the rest of the territories, bar the West bank town of Ramallah.
There have been few Israeli operations in Jericho, but troops have recently pushed into the town on several occasions after 46 wanted militants were freed from the jail on February 9. — AFP