GUSH KATIF, Gaza Strip, 1 July 2005 — Israeli police commandos stormed a hotel in a Gaza settlement yesterday and ejected 150 radical Jews from a bastion of resistance to Israel’s planned withdrawal from the occupied territory. 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 tires and bottles filled with fuel,” said Gen. Dan Harel, the Israeli military commander in the Gaza region.

Nadia Matar, a far-right activist leader, shouted at police ousting her from the hotel: “Cossacks! Cossacks! Shame on the government for expelling Jews as if they were in Russia.”

Harel said on Israel Radio that the raid was provoked by “hooligans and lawbreakers with no regard for human life”. Harel said such radicals were responsible for the attempted “lynching” on Wednesday of a Palestinian youth stoned from close range in a clash sparked by Jewish youths’ seizure of an outpost in the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Al-Mawasi.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed Israel would block far-right Jews from obstructing the pullout. “We will deal with these phenomena with a heavy hand since they threaten our very existence here as a Jewish and democratic country,” he said.

Sharon told economists the pullout would start on schedule and “begin in seven weeks time ... I promise that I will not be deterred from implementing the evacuation from Gaza because of threats and intimidation from political opponents.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Army said it was investigating reports that two soldiers had gone missing in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, but it could not confirm that they had been kidnapped.

A Palestinian faction said it was holding two Israeli soldiers it had seized, having earlier said it had killed them.

“After investigating the matter we cannot confirm that Israelis have been kidnapped. The Israel Defense Forces continue their investigations,” an army spokeswoman said.

Military sources said preliminary checks had not revealed that any soldiers were missing. Israeli soldiers were pulled back after a search raid into Nablus.

A Palestinian security source said an Israeli vehicle had been found abandoned in the Balata refugee camp of the militant stronghold. It showed no signs of damage.

Abu Thaer, a spokesman for the Ayman Jouda units of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, told a news conference in the Gaza Strip that two soldiers had been captured when they entered Nablus undercover as part of a raiding force.

Abu Thaer said that the two were being held alive in Nablus and had not been killed — as he himself had said earlier. He presented no evidence, but said this would follow. Some other units of the Al-Aqsa Brigades said they knew nothing of such an incident in Nablus.