World

Prison Raid Sparks Palestinian Anger

March 14, 2006 / 4:01 PM EST / CBS/AP

Palestinian gunmen kidnapped foreign nationals and attacked foreign offices in the Gaza Strip and West Bank Tuesday, in apparent retaliation for Israel's raid on a prison in Jericho.

Palestinians blamed the U.S. and Britain for the raid because the two countries withdrew their monitors from the prison minutes before the Israeli raid.

"This is a response to what Bush did today in Jericho," one of the gunmen said.

Among the developments:

Some 15,000 Palestinians led by dozens of gunmen firing in the air marched in Gaza City to protest the raid. The demonstrators, chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans, marched toward the Palestinian parliament building.

A police-escorted convoy carrying 15 foreigners, including an American couple and their three children, left Gaza City toward Israel. Earlier, foreigners had sought refuge with the Palestinian security forces.

A U.N. aid agency and the International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday they were temporarily pulling all foreign staff out of the West Bank and Gaza.

Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday kidnapped American university professor Douglas Johnson in the West Bank and threatened to kill him if Israel harmed Saadat. The English professor had been buying something from a street vendor in Jenin. Later, he was freed.

Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday broke into the offices of the German television network ARD in Gaza City.

Gunmen burst into a British cultural center in the Gaza Strip and after a brief shootout with Palestinian police, torched the building, then shot at Palestinian fire engines, hampering efforts to put out the flames, witnesses said. There were no reports of casualties.

Militants stormed the offices of AMIDEAST, a private American organization that provides English classes and academic testing services. The rioters broke windows and beat a Palestinian employee who tried to stop them. "We don't want to see any Americans here," one of the gunmen shouted when Palestinian police approached the AMIDEAST office.

Others abducted included a Swiss Red Cross worker, two Australian teachers, two French medical workers and three journalists — one French and two South Korean. The two teachers were later released.

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.

At first, the Palestinian guards fought the Israeli troops. CBS News correspondent David 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.

"We are not going to surrender, we are going to face our destiny with courage," Saadat told Al-Jazeera television in a telephone interview from the jail.

Later, Saadat and five other militants did surrender, some 10 hours after the standoff began. An Israeli official said they would be tried by Israeli courts.

Saadat and other prisoners were permitted by their Palestinian jailers to keep cell phones during the their imprisonment, reports Berger, which allowed them to make calls to Al-Jazeera and others media.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said he held Britain and the U.S. responsible for the raid on the Jericho prison, where Saadat, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had been held under British and American guard. Saadat was accused of masterminding the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister in 2001.

U.S. and British monitors left the prison early Tuesday — citing a deterioration in the security situation — and Israeli forces arrived shortly after their departure.

"The American and British observers bear full responsibility for their withdrawal from Jericho prison this morning without the knowledge of the Palestinian Authority," a statement from Abbas' office said, but also called on Palestinians to cease attacks on foreign cultural centers.

A PFLP statement Tuesday warned of retaliation if Saadat came to any harm.

"Any attempt to harm our comrades will make all British and Americans a target by our cells," it said. The group set up roadblocks near the Gaza Strip's northern exit, stopping cars in a search for fleeing foreigners.

Saadat was elected to the Palestinian legislature in January.

Israel was also demanding the surrender of four other members of the PFLP, including the gunman who killed Zeevi, and Fuad Shobaki, the alleged mastermind of an illegal weapons shipment to the Palestinian Authority several years ago.

Zeevi's son, Palmach, told Israel's Channel 10 TV that the raid was "an extraordinary and very important decision" by the government.

The six men were being held at the jail under the supervision of British and American wardens in accordance with a deal worked out between President 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 also criticized the agreement, which forced them to jail one of their top militant leaders under Israeli pressure. After Hamas won the Jan. 25 Palestinian parliamentary elections, some leaders of the militant group said they planned to free Saadat.

In other Mideast developments Tuesday:

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, front-runner in Israel's March 28 election, pledged Tuesday to annex the Jewish settlement of Ariel, deep in the West Bank, a message aimed at appeasing settlers alarmed by his plans to withdraw from large parts of the West Bank over the next four years.

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a network of underground chambers and tunnels used during the Jewish revolt against the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago. They were found in an Arab village near Nazareth and date back to 66-70 AD, prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. Archaeologists say Jews stored supplies and were planning to hide in the tunnels from the Romans. They say it shows that Jews planned the revolt, and it was not spontaneous as historians once believed.