Israelis seize Palestinian Cabinet minister and 32 officials in West Bank

Last updated at 11:00 25 May 2007

Israeli troops in the West Bank arrested more than 30 senior Hamas members early today, including a Cabinet minister, legislators and mayors - pressing forward with an offensive against the Islamic militant group.

The roundup came hours after Israeli planes struck what the military said were money changing offices and other businesses in Gaza used to channel funds to Hamas.

Israel has been attacking Hamas targets for more than a week in retaliation for repeated rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli border towns.

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The Israeli army said it arrested 33 Hamas leaders in its overnight sweep. The most prominent official taken in the roundup was Education Minister Nasser Shaer, considered a pragmatist in the movement.

His wife, Huda, said soldiers knocked on the door of their home in the West Bank city of Nablus and took him away. Troops also seized Shaer's computer, she said. Israel also detained Shaer for a month last year during a similar crackdown before a judge ordered his release.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that in the fight to neutralize Hamas, arrests were preferable to bloodshed.

"Arrests are better than shooting," he told Israeli Army Radio. "The arrest of these Hamas leaders sends a message to the military organizations that we demand that this firing (of rockets) stop."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the arrests were a blow to peace efforts, and a spokesman for Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, called for the immediate release of the detainees and called on the U.N. and European Union to impose sanctions on Israel.

"These aggressive practices show the extent of the Israeli escalation and arrogance in the Palestinian territories, and also show how dismissive the Israeli government is of all customs and international laws," spokesman Ghazi Hamad said.

Abbas, a moderate from the Fatah party, has been meeting with Haniyeh in Gaza this week in an effort to reduce tensions with Israel.

Today's raid was the second major crackdown on Hamas in the past year. Israel rounded up dozens of Hamas officials, including three Cabinet ministers, last June after Palestinian militants tunneled into Israel from Gaza and captured an Israeli soldier.

Some 40 Hamas lawmakers arrested last summer - nearly one-third of the Palestinian legislature - are still behind bars. Despite the crackdown, the soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, remains in captivity.

Among those rounded up today were former Cabinet minister Abdel Rahman Zeidan, legislators Hamed Bitawi and Daoud Abu Ser, the mayors of the towns of Nablus, Qalqiliya and Beita, and the head of the main Islamic charity in Nablus, Fayad al-Arba.

Until today, Israel's crackdown on Hamas had been largely focused on the group's Gaza Strip stronghold. Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 40 Palestinians in Gaza over the past week, most of them militants.

In new violence, a Palestinian was killed today by Israeli tank fire near the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, local hospital staff said.

The Israeli military said a tank fired shells into an area close to the border with Israel that is regularly used by militants to fire rockets.

Israeli aircraft yesterday demolished two money exchange shops in Gaza City used to channel funds to Hamas militants, the military said. The army said the shops served as a conduit for millions of dollars sent from Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

Three people were slightly wounded in one of the attacks, medical officials said, and four stores were damaged in another, Palestinian security officials said. Electricity was cut off in parts of the town.

The airstrikes came as Abbas and Haniyeh were making a new push to restore a truce with Israel.

It also was the first time the men have met since fighting between their Hamas and Fatah movements broke out two weeks ago, killing more than 50 people. The two sides reached a truce last weekend, but tensions remain high.

The Abbas-Haniyeh meeting ended with the two sides agreeing their factions would meet again.

"We are working to recommit to the truce," Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.

A Haniyeh aide, Ahmed Yousef, said a renewed cease-fire with Israel would have to be comprehensive, and include the West Bank in addition to Gaza. The previous truce, brokered in November, applied only to the Gaza-Israel border, and Israel rejected repeated Palestinian demands that it also halt arrest raids in the West Bank.

"If it is going to be for Gaza only, then no one will be able to convince the Palestinian resistance factions to commit to that," Yousef said.

Israel, however, sees no point in extending to the West Bank a truce its says has failed to prove itself in Gaza.

"Israel has always said that if a cease-fire is kept in Gaza we're willing to extend it to the West Bank," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "The trouble is that a cease fire in Gaza has never been kept ... It has been a sham. The idea of extending a failure is flawed one."