Sharon calls radical Jews 'thugs'

Six weeks before the planned evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip is due to begin, Ariel Sharon's patience with increasingly militant protesters appears to have finally snapped.

The sight this week of right-wing Jewish extremists taunting, stoning and beating Gaza Palestinians, while threatening to "set the country on fire" if the security services tried to stop them, made the Prime Minister act.

On Wednesday, he ordered soldiers to drag the last 35 squatters out of a house they had commandeered in Muwasi, an Arab village next to the main Gush Katif settlement block.

On Thursday Israeli police stormed a hotel in a Gaza settlement and ejected 150 radical Jews who had hoped to form a bastion of resistance to Israel's planned withdrawal from the occupied territory.

Commandos scaled ladders to enter the barricaded seaside hotel after the Army declared a closed military zone in Jewish settlements in Gaza to put an end to an influx of ultra-nationalists bent on scuttling next month's withdrawal.

Sharon vowed Israel would block far-right Jews from obstructing the pullout, denouncing them as "thugs who try to terrify Israeli society and tear it apart by violence against Jews and Arabs".

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered the Army to bring to justice those responsible for what Israeli reporters described as an attempted lynching of an 18-year-old Palestinian.

"They wanted only one thing: to kill," Itzik Saban wrote in a account in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot.

"The bruised Palestinian began to lose consciousness. About five insane Jews launched a mad rush at him. From a metre away, they threw stones, rocks, blocks at him."

Thousands of police are now being mobilised to thwart orange-shirted settlers from paralysing traffic on roads inside Israel.

Sharon denounced the lynch mob as barbarians. "This is an act of savagery, vulgarity and irresponsibility," the Prime Minister fumed.

"Such things must be stopped. We cannot let a small group of law-breakers impose a reign of terror."

The battle, he insisted, was no longer over the disengagement plan, but over the future of Israel.

"Under no circumstances can we allow a lawless gang to try to take control of life in Israel. Every measure must be taken to end this rampaging."

Mainstream settler leaders are worried that the mayhem, in Gaza and Israel, will undermine the anti-disengagement campaign's claim to legitimacy. It is alienating some who empathised with families being evicted from their homes.

When protesters tried to block the Tel Aviv highway, a driver kicked a child who was lying under the wheels of his truck. A motorcyclist beat teenagers with a chain. Another threatened them with a hammer.

Laurence Eziz, a Gush Katif spokeswoman, rejoiced that the Army had expelled the radicals from the hotel.

"They don't add anything to the pride of Gush Katif," she said. "This is not the way we want to behave."

For months, settlers' leaders have talked about possible "civil war" if the planned disengagement of Israel from 21 Gaza settlements goes ahead.

Eziz said: "I don't know if it will be civil war, but there is a possibility of very strong battles, a very strong protest against the soldiers and against the civilian population."

In clearing the hotel, heavily armed commandos broke down doors and gave chase through the compound to grab the religious squatters, some of whom were women clutching small children who had bound themselves to furniture.

They were carried or dragged kicking and screaming out of the white stucco complex and some were handcuffed in a lightning operation completed in 30 minutes and without casualties, security commanders said. There were four arrests.

"They have all been removed," said General Dan Harel, the Israeli military commander in the Gaza region.

"There's no doubt they were preparing for siege here. We found boarded-up windows and supplies of tyres and bottles filled with fuel."

Nadia Matar, a far-right activist leader, shouted at police ousting her from the hotel: "Cossacks! Cossacks! Shame on the Government for expelling Jews as if they were in Russia."

Harel said on Israel Radio the raid was provoked by "hooligans and lawbreakers with no regard for human life".

Opinion polls have shown that most Israelis favour his plan, but Sharon has been confronted with escalating protests by fringe ultra-nationalists, some of whom have threatened his life.

Thursday's raid amounted to a dress rehearsal for security forces being trained to handle expected resistance among the 8500 Gaza settlers to be evacuated.

An Army spokeswoman said the military closure was imposed to pre-empt further "extremist" violence that could inflame Gaza, where most Palestinian militants have been observing a ceasefire that is vital to a smooth pullout.

"[We have] information that further groups of Israelis may be moving towards Gaza in an attempt to provide back-up for the rioters," the Army said, alluding to the Kach activists in Mawasi.

Once the radical threat was removed, the military ban on non-residents would be lifted.

The settlers' council threatened to bring throngs of protesters to the Gaza area unless the restrictions were lifted.

The Palm Beach Hotel, derelict for years, was converted two months ago into an anti-evacuation redoubt by ultra-nationalists from hardline settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Religious rightists say Sharon's disengagement strategy betrays Jewish claims on biblical land and appeases Palestinian militancy that has inspired many suicide bombings.

Palestinians welcome any Israeli withdrawals from lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

But they say they fear Sharon intends to leave Gaza mainly in order to cement Israel's hold on much larger settlements in the West Bank.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS