Israel Curbs Entry Into Gaza, Routs Settlers Occupying Hotel

Seeking to avoid more clashes with opponents of the planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israeli military officials on Thursday barred nonresidents from the area and squads of police emptied a beachfront hotel used as a base by dozens of the Jewish militants.

Authorities said the hotel evacuation went smoothly, though many of the 150 or so settlers had to be carried from the complex, writhing and shouting, “Jews don’t expel Jews!” before being loaded onto buses.

Some activists burned tires in protest, sending up a veil of black smoke as officers went door to door to pull occupants from the stucco complex. Four people were arrested. No one was injured.

It was the second time in as many days that activists were forcibly removed from sites around Gush Katif, the main block of Jewish settlements in Gaza.

The army said the temporary closure of Gaza was aimed at preventing the arrival of Jewish militants. Military officials said they were concerned that activists were planning acts of provocation before the withdrawal of settlers and Israeli troops from Gaza, which is to begin next month.

“Updated information exists regarding additional groups of Israelis that are moving toward the Gaza Strip in an attempt to provide backup for the rioters and to act to further escalate the situation,” the military said in a statement. “A further escalation of this course of action taken by radical elements may have grave effects on the region.”

The army lifted the travel restrictions early today, Israel Radio reported.

The moves by authorities came after growing violence involving opponents of the withdrawal, many of whom moved from settlements in the West Bank to protest the pullout.

A day earlier, Jewish squatters scuffled with soldiers who were sent to clear them from two abandoned Palestinian homes they had taken over within the Gush Katif block.

The mob set upon two Palestinian teenagers, pelting one with rocks as he lay on the ground and preventing medics from getting close. Israeli journalists ultimately braved the stones to pull the youth to safety, according to their account.

Israeli newspapers on Thursday carried color photographs of the bleeding youth, including one that showed an Israeli soldier squatting before him in an apparent attempt to halt the barrage of stones.

The attack, along with attempts Wednesday by activists to snarl traffic in Israel by blocking roads and in one case pouring oil and spikes onto the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, elicited disgust among many Israelis and drew pledges by leaders to take a hard line against what they labeled hooliganism.

“I will not let this situation continue,” Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in remarks published in the daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “I am not deterred by the crudeness that the disengagement opponents are showing me -- they will not deter me.”

Sharon said the stoning of the Palestinian youth, which some officials described as an attempted lynching, was “barbaric.” Mainstream settler leaders also decried the attack.

The formerly abandoned hotel served for weeks as a barracks for opponents of the pullout, including members of the ultranationalist Kach movement, which is outlawed.

The activists cleaned and renovated the complex, stockpiling food and vowing to turn it into a core of resistance to the withdrawal, which they view as the forcible expulsion of Jews from land that is their biblical birthright.

The hotel became a source of increasing worry to authorities. More than a week earlier, some occupants were accused of beating and shooting at Palestinians from the neighboring Muwasi community, which generally has had untroubled relations with the Gaza settlers.

Pro-settler activists have advocated civil disobedience in an effort to disrupt the pullout, which will involve all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four others in the northern West Bank. For the most part, protests have been nonviolent, but authorities have grown increasingly concerned that activists would wreak havoc in Gaza.

The closure did not restrict Gaza settlers, some of whom have voiced dismay over tactics employed by the activists.

But settler leaders complained that the closure was making it impossible to move from one area of the Gush Katif block to another and delaying entry from Israel at a key checkpoint.