Israeli soldiers burst into the home of the Palestinian deputy prime minister before dawn Saturday and took him away for questioning, detaining the highest-ranking Hamas official in a seven-week-old crackdown against the ruling Islamic militant group, reported The Associated Press. Palestinian officials condemned the arrest of Nasser Shaer, a former university professor known as a pragmatist in Hamas, and accused Israel of undermining their efforts to form a broad government coalition. Israel launched its latest crackdown against Hamas, which controls the Palestinian legislature and Cabinet, shortly after Hamas-allied militants from Gaza captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid June 25. Despite an ongoing Israeli military offensive in Gaza, the soldier has not been freed. Since the kidnapping, Israeli forces arrested eight Hamas Cabinet ministers and more than two dozen lawmakers, including the speaker of parliament, since late June. But Shaer, 45, had eluded arrest and gone into hiding. Shaer's wife said he was seized at about 4:30 a.m. Saturday at an apartment where his family, including six children, had been hiding for several weeks. She said the family had cut off contact with all their friends in Ramallah and rarely ventured outside.
