Palestinian terorists have abducted ten foreigners in the Gaza Strip, and continue to hold at least three of them hostage.
The abductions came in the midst of the Jericho raid in which the Israel Defense Forces demanded the surrender of Ahmed Sa’adat, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, responsible for Ze’evi’s assassination. Five other wanted inmates were also sought for their ties to the assassination.
Several international relief agencies closed their offices in the Palestinian territories, while masked Palestinian policemen rounded up foreigners and whisked them to safety.
Frightened foreigners sought refuge at Palestinian security headquarters, and a UN jeep came under fire as it tried to leave the coastal strip. Angry Palestinians accused Britain and the U.S. of complicity in Israel’s siege of the prison and arrest of a leading Palestinian militant.
The outbreak of anti-foreigner violence was the second in recent weeks. Reacting to Danish cartoons disparaging the Prophet Muhammad, angry Palestinians stormed European buildings and briefly held some aid workers. The relief teams had just started trickling back into the coastal strip when Tuesday’s violence sent them scurrying for safety again.
Several international aid agencies, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said they were temporarily pulling their staff out of the West Bank and Gaza.
Officials said UN operations would not be affected, as the 8,500 local Palestinian workers would remain on the job, while 13 foreign UN staffers were leaving the Palestinian areas.
In Gaza, gunmen went from room to room in hotels, looking for foreigners. By midafternoon, they had taken a Swiss Red Cross worker, two Australian teachers, two French medical workers and three journalists – one French and two South Korean, Palestinian and foreign officials said.
One clueless idiot says he feels sorry for the scum who snatched him.
The American professor, Douglas Johnson, said he was unharmed and understood his abductors’ actions.
“They are angry over what is going on in Jericho. I feel sympathy with them,” he told an AP reporter at an abandoned cemetery, where he was briefly held before being freed.
Meanwhile, these terrorists took an AP reporter into “protective custody” during the episode!
Palestinian security took some foreigners, including Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti, into protective custody, while others found their own way to security headquarters.
As if anybody needed any more evidence that The Associated Press is on the anti-Israeli side.
