Palestinian Prisoners Surrender
Israeli troops using tanks, helicopters and bulldozers pounded a West Bank prison, forcing the surrender of a Palestinian militant leader and his accomplices in the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister.
Angry Palestinians blamed the British and Americans, because British monitors left the jail just before the raid, and Palestinian gunmen retaliated by kidnapping at least 10 foreigners, including an American teacher. It was the most widespread violence since Hamas militants swept parliamentary elections, and could foreshadow broader confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Frightened foreigners took refuge at Palestinian security headquarters in Gaza as militants attacked offices linked to the United States and Europe, torching the British Council building in Gaza City. Among those kidnapped were an American professor, two South Korean journalists, a Canadian aid worker and two Australian teachers at an American school.
After nightfall a Swiss Red Cross worker was released, leaving three foreigners in captivity — two French citizens and a South Korean.
It was the highest-profile Israeli incursion into a Palestinian town in months and came just two weeks before Israeli elections.
Palestinians condemned the raid, which left three of their countrymen dead, as a campaign stunt. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cut short a European trip and was on his way back home to deal with the crisis created by the prison siege, said Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat.
The raid came amid a breakdown in a carefully crafted 4-year-old deal between the Palestinians, Israel, the U.S. and Britain over the guarding of the prisoners. It underscored the wider collapse of relations between Israel and the Palestinians since the militant Hamas group won the Jan. 25 Palestinian elections. By chance, the U.S. team was not on duty Tuesday.
CBS News correspondent David Hawkins reports Israeli officials said recent statements by Palestinian officials and Hamas leaders that suggested they would soon be free inmates, combined with the withdrawal of the monitors, forced them to act.
"There were clear indications these killers would be set free," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. "We had to act to make sure these killers would stay under lock and key."
The target of the Israeli raid was Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO group, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger (audio). Saadat was jailed in Palestinian-ruled Jericho after the group claimed responsibility for the killing of Israeli Cabinet Minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001.
Saadat was elected to the Palestinian legislature in January.
At first, the Palestinian guards fought the Israeli troops. Hawkins (audio) watched the firefight, which left one Palestinian dead and several injured, from the roof of a nearby house. Then the guards surrendered, but Saadat vowed to stay holed up inside the prison.
Among the developments:
The troops surrounded the prison for nearly 10 hours, smashing down walls with bulldozers and shooting tank shells at its walls. Dozens of prisoners and Palestinian police were pulled out of the building in their underwear and searched and blindfolded by Israeli troops.
The six wanted prisoners, who insisted they would not be taken alive, were among the last to surrender. The gray-haired Saadat, wearing a light-colored jacket, walked out of the prison in a single file line with his peers. He looked down and did not raise his arms in surrender, as many of the other prisoners had done throughout the day.
In addition to the five men implicated in Zeevi's murder, Israel also seized Fuad Shobaki, the mastermind of an illegal weapons shipment to the Palestinian Authority several years ago, and 15 other militants, said Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, the chief of Israel's central command.
Israeli government spokesman Raanan Gissin said the men would bet put on trial.
Zeevi's son, Palmach, hailed the raid as "brave" and said his father "would have said this is the right thing to do."
British and American officials said they had complained repeatedly about security conditions at the prison and threatened in a letter last week, a copy of which was sent to Israel, to remove the monitors if things did not improve immediately.
Naveh said troops had been waiting for days outside Jericho for the monitors to leave. Minutes after the withdrawal Tuesday morning, the troops rushed in, he said, denying there was any coordination with the monitors.
Hundreds of Israeli troops entered the town, bursting through the front gate of the jail with a bulldozer and exchanging fire with the Palestinian police.
One policeman standing near the gate was killed in the shootout and a prisoner was also killed, security officials said. A third Palestinian was wounded and later died in an Israeli hospital, the army said.
Explosions shook the prison throughout the day as Israeli tanks fired shells at the walls, and thick smoke filled the sky. Helicopters flew overhead. Youths in the town threw rocks at the Israeli soldiers and protesters placed burning tires in the roads.
The six wanted men were being held at the jail under the supervision of British and American wardens in accordance with a deal worked out between U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2002. The agreement allowed the prisoners to be transferred from Yasser Arafat's besieged compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where they were holed up during Israel's operation Defensive Shield in April 2002.
Israeli hard-liners chafed at the deal, believing it allowed an assassin to escape justice; Palestinians disliked having to jail a popular militant leader.
Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher said the upcoming Israeli elections were one of the reasons behind the raid, but the main catalyst was concern Hamas would free Saadat, who was elected to the legislature in January.
Soon after the election, Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal said the group planned to release him. On March 7, Palestinian leader Abbas said he was willing to release Saadat, but only if the PFLP accepted responsibility for his fate.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said conditions at the prison were so bad that the observers had to work from the roof rather than the inside of the prison. Guards were allowing prisoners to use mobile phones in violation of the agreement and failing to enforce rules limiting visitors and phone calls, he said.
British officials had been in contact with the Palestinians four times since Friday to convey the urgency of their concerns, Straw said. With the request ignored, the observers left the prison Tuesday morning, he said. "Ultimately, the safety of our personnel has to take precedence," he said.
U.S. officials said there were no American monitors at the prison Tuesday, just Britons. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Palestinians had been repeatedly informed of the U.S. and British concerns about conditions at the jail.
McCormack said U.S. officials had been in touch with both sides "to urge calm and restraint."
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told Channel 2 TV that Israel did not inform the United States in advance or coordinate the raid with Washington.
Abbas lashed out at the Americans and the British, saying they violated the agreement by withdrawing the monitors without telling him.
He also called on Palestinians to refrain from attacks on foreigners. But the raid cause an unprecedented spasm of violence against foreigners across the Palestinian areas.
Incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, called the raid "a dangerous escalation against the Palestinian leaders and freedom fighters."