Israeli police commandos stormed a hotel in a Gaza settlement on Thursday and ejected 150 radical Jews from a bastion of resistance to Israel's planned withdrawal from the occupied territory, Reuters reported from Gush Katif, Gaza Strip. Police 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 ultranationalists bent on scuttling the August withdrawal. The heavily armed commandos broke down room doors and gave chase through the Palm Beach Hotel compound to grab the religious squatters. Some of them 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. There's no doubt they were preparing for siege here. We found boarded-up windows and supplies of tyres and bottles filled with fuel," said General Dan Harel, the Israeli military commander in the Gaza region, to Reuters. --More 2328 Local Time 2028 GMT
