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A Swiss national is seen after he was released by Palestinian gunmen. (AP)
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Douglas Johnson, a professor of English at the American University, surrounded by Palestinian kidnappers. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners March 15, 2006 |
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| Palestinians storm and burn the building of the British Council in Gaza city, Tuesday. (AP) |
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Foreigners scurried for safety as angry Palestinians went on a kidnapping spree to protest Israel's raid on a West Bank prison on Tuesday.
Several international relief agencies closed their offices in the Palestinian territories, while masked Palestinian policemen rounded up foreigners and whisked them to safety.
Palestinian gunmen abducted 10 journalists and aid workers in the territories and vandalized offices linked to the U.S. and Britain, in the most violent campaign against foreigners in recent memory.
Frightened foreigners sought refuge at Palestinian security headquarters, and a U.N. jeep came under fire as it tried to leave the coastal strip. Angry Palestinians accused Britain and the U.S. of complicity in Israel's siege of the prison and arrest of a leading Palestinian terrorist.
The fury against foreigners hit aid groups and organizations that have been working to alleviate the grinding poverty Palestinians face in Gaza, and it threatened to disrupt relief efforts.
"The European Commission deplores the attacks on member states' offices. The first to suffer are the Palestinian people" which the EU offices are supposed to help, said Johannes Laitenberger, spokesman for the EU executive office.
The outbreak of anti-foreigner violence was the second in recent weeks. Reacting to Danish cartoons disparaging the Prophet Muhammad, angry Palestinians stormed European buildings and briefly held some aid workers. The relief teams had just started trickling back into the coastal strip when Tuesday's violence sent them scurrying for safety again.
Several international aid agencies, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said they were temporarily pulling their staff out of the West Bank and Gaza.
Officials said U.N. operations would not be affected, as the 8,500 local Palestinian workers would remain on the job, while 13 foreign U.N. staffers were leaving the Palestinian areas.
By the end of the day, all but three of the kidnapped foreigners were freed.
The kidnappings started shortly after Israeli forces surrounded the Jericho prison, demanding the surrender of Ahmed Saadat, the leader of a radical PLO faction, and four of his alleged accomplices in the 2001 killing of an Israeli Cabinet minister. A sixth militant was being sought on other charges.
In Gaza, gunmen went from room to room in hotels, looking for foreigners. By midafternoon, they had taken a Swiss Red Cross worker, two Australian teachers, two French medical workers and three journalists - one French and two South Korean, Palestinian and foreign officials said.
Also kidnapped were a Canadian aid worker and an American professor at the American University in the West Bank town of Jenin.
The American professor, Douglas Johnson, said he was unharmed and understood his abductors' actions.
"They are angry over what is going on in Jericho. I feel sympathy with them," he told an AP reporter at an abandoned cemetery, where he was briefly held before being freed.
Palestinian security took some foreigners into protective custody, while others found their own way to security headquarters.
Among those receiving the protection of the Preventive Security Services were citizens of France, Britain, Germany, Italy and South Korea, security officials said.
Armed militants easily overpowered Palestinian police on their way to vandalizing Western aid agencies.
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 also 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.
Elsewhere in Gaza city, a crowd stormed empty European Union offices in Gaza City, smashing windows and replacing the EU flag with a militant banner. Some of the intruders shouted: "Death to the Americans, death to the British."
In the West Bank, dozens of Palestinians occupied the local British Council office and put up banners of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the militant faction headed by Saadat. The building had been evacuated earlier, a staff member said.
UK, US: PA leader was "repeatedly" warned monitors would leave prison
Britain repeatedly warned Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that it would withdraw its monitors from a Jericho prison raided Tuesday by Israeli forces, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
Straw said in a House of Commons question session that Britain and the United States had repeatedly told the Palestinian Authority about security problems at the prison, and had urged it to do more to ensure the monitors' safety. The authority is responsible for security at the jail under a 2002 agreement.
Straw said the two countries wrote to Abbas on March 8 telling him they would withdraw their monitors unless security improved immediately.
Britain's consul general also contacted Abbas's office with a similar message four times between Friday and Tuesday morning, Straw said.
"The Palestinian Authority has consistently failed to meet its obligations" to provide security, Straw said. "Ultimately the safety of our personnel has to take precedence. ... These conditions have not been met, and we have terminated our involvement with the mission today."
"The monitors were withdrawn out of concern for their safety" US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Tuesday. "The Palestinians were informed repeatedly of those concerns," including the March 8 British letter, which he described as "sort of a last warning."
McCormack said the British monitors were the last to leave as the Americans had already pulled out.
Asked whether the Israeli response was appropriate, McCormack demurred.
"I am not going to comment on any particular response at this point, only that we are urging calm on al sides and that we would like to see it resolved as quickly as possible," he said.
Abbas blamed the U.S. and British withdrawal Tuesday morning for the raid.
Israeli forces arrived soon after, demanding the surrender of prisoners, and the Israeli army said the government had ordered the raid because the monitors were withdrawn.
Straw said Britain was obliged under the 2002 agreement to tell Israel it might pull out.
The Foreign Office said Britain had no advance knowledge of the Israeli raid, although Straw said it was clear such an action was likely if the observers left. Israel said the raid had targeted a number of prisoners for arrest, including the mastermind of the 2001 killing of an Israeli Cabinet minister.
The operation sparked a shootout with Palestinian police that killed one Palestinian officer and a prisoner, Palestinian security officials said. Israeli forces fired tank shells at the prison, and bulldozers tore down some of the building's walls.
Six prisoners, including five suspected in the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, 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.
The March 8 letter to Abbas from John Jenkins, the British consul general in Jerusalem, and Jake Walles, the American representative there, said the Palestinian Authority had never fully complied with the agreement that put the observers in place, according to a copy released by the Foreign Office.
Straw said conditions 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.
"The pending handover of governmental power to a political party that has repeatedly called for the release of the Jericho detainees also calls into question the political sustainability of the monitoring mission," the letter said, referring to the impending Hamas takeover of the Palestinian government.
Straw said staff at the British Council office in Gaza City had evacuated before hundreds of demonstrators set fire to the building on Tuesday. No Britons were caught up in that violence, he said.
The Foreign Office warned Britons against all travel to Gaza and the West Bank.
It said there were "serious threats against U.K. and U.S. nationals" in the area. "We are receiving reports of violence and attempted kidnapping in Gaza," the warning added.
The Muslim Council of Britain said the attack on the British Council offices and kidnapping of foreign citizens were "wholly unlawful responses," but condemned the Israeli raid on the jail.
AP contributed to this report.
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