Israel Cracks Down on Islamic Groups
Israel has arrested about 450 members of Islamic and PLO groups opposed to Middle East peace talks in the biggest raid in the occupied territories since the negotiations began, security sources said Thursday.
The Shin Bet secret police and army began rounding up activists of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas and two other groups in October, they said.
The military censor held up reports of the crackdown while it was under way.
The arrests were ordered to reduce violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip against the peace talks, which begin an eighth round in Washington next week.
About half of those arrested were from Hamas. Others were from Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
All three oppose the 13-month-old peace talks and compete for influence among the nearly 2 million Palestinians in the territories with Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction of the PLO, which backs the talks. Palestinians have been in revolt against the occupation for nearly five years.
None of those arrested has been charged. Most are likely to be held without trial. The arrests were made in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank towns of Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah.
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