Foes of pullout targeted

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip — Israeli police, backed up by soldiers, swarmed into an abandoned seaside resort yesterday to evict 150 die-hard opponents of the government’s planned pullout from Gaza in a prelude to the evacuation of Jewish settlements later this summer.

The first face-off of Israeli security forces and the radicals began with the military sealing off the Gush Katif settlement bloc to civilians in order to block sympathizers from Israel and the West Bank from arriving as reinforcements.

The assault on the Palm Beach Hotel ended with relative ease and little resistance even though commanders readied themselves for a prolonged standoff. About 700 military police and SWAT teams took less than an hour to complete the operation and arrested only four activists.

“We prepared for a scenario that was much longer and more difficult,” said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of the military’s southern command, after the operation. “We don’t plan to allow the extremists to return to here.”

A series of provocations by Jewish extremists this week — including the lynching of a Palestinian in Gaza and the blocking of highway junctions through Israel had stirred concern about the government’s resolve to confront the radicals and carry out the withdrawal.

The eviction was also a test of the security forces’ cohesiveness after a soldier on Sunday refused an order to rein in Jewish demonstrators in Gaza.

“Hooliganism and refusal are not the way of Judaism, not the way of the settlements, and not the way of Israel,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a speech after the eviction. “We will take care of these phenomena with a strong hand because they threaten our very existence here.”

After sitting empty for three years because of the Palestinian uprising, the decaying hotel was renamed Fortress by the Sea and turned into a crude domicile for religious seminary students, families with young children and far-right activists associated with Kach, a group outlawed in Israel for advocating the forcible expulsion of Arabs.

Minutes after the hotel was cleared, black smoke was still billowing from burning tires placed at the perimeter of the hotel groups. A yellow flag with Hebrew letters spelling “Messiah” still flapped above the building. In the courtyard, a baby bassinet sat abandoned.

After the eviction, several busloads of evacuees were taken away from the hotel, some of them with their hands shackled and flashing a “V” sign. Other hotel dwellers were immediately released.

Surrounded by dozens of military police, a husband and wife rested with their two infants on the grass of a nearby girls’ school.

“Neither side used much force,” said Nadav, who declined to give his surname and who brought his family to the hotel a week ago. “I am crying. This situation hurts. They’re expelling us from heaven.”

In a fruitless attempt to block the buses carrying evacuees away from the hotel, several demonstrators from the nearby Jewish settlements sat in the middle of a road junction and called on soldiers to refuse orders.

“A Jew doesn’t evict a Jew,” they cried.

Before the evacuation, hotel spokespersons said they were stockpiling food, water, diapers and cutting tools to hold out against Israeli forces after the start of the disengagement.

The hotel residents came from outside of Gaza to show solidarity with the settlers and to serve as a lightning rod for thousands of Israelis to descend on the settlements to make the disengagement impossible.

Many local residents in Gush Katif saw the hotel dwellers as uninvited provocateurs. The Gaza settlers said clashes between Israelis and the Palestinian Bedouin were nonexistent until this week.

“Most of the people in Gush Katif are moderate people. They are not extremists,” said Shimon Snir, a farmer and resident of a nearby settlement. “People wanted to continue on, but they wanted to make a mess.”