Israeli forces seized a Palestinian Cabinet minister and 32 other officials in the occupied West Bank and launched air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, stepping up a campaign against Hamas Islamists.
The overnight arrests came after Hamas and other groups rebuffed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s call for a halt to rocket attacks by Gaza militants at Israeli towns. Two months after they formed a unity government, Hamas and Abbas’s secular Fatah faction remain daggers drawn in a struggle for control.
Israeli troops entered Nablus and took into custody Education Minister Naser al-Shaer of Hamas, according to his wife, Huda. “I asked them, ‘Why are you taking him’. The officer said, ‘We have orders’,” she said.
Israeli forces also seized at least three Hamas lawmakers, the mayor and deputy mayor of Nablus and other Hamas officials in neighbouring towns and villages. The Israeli army said in a statement that 33 people had been arrested across the West Bank and were taken for questioning.
Palestinian government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said the arrests displayed “a scale of escalation and Israeli arrogance” and called for those arrested to be released. “Through this... aggression the Israeli government is once again pushing the region into a cycle of violence and it bears the full responsibility for the consequences resulting from such irresponsible actions,” Hamad said.
The Israeli army said in a statement: “The Hamas terror organisation is involved in enhancing the terror infrastructure in the (West Bank) region. The organisation exploits governmental institutions to support terrorist activity.”
An Israeli official said Israel would continue to seek out Palestinian militants: “Israel is making it crystal clear that it is adamant about stopping the Hamas terror directed against us inboth the Gaza Strip via rocket attacks and in the West Bank where the terror cells continue to flourish.”