AL-MAWASI (Gaza Strip), June 29: Israeli troops smashed their way into a Gaza building on Wednesday and ejected about 30 ultranationalist Jews who seized it as an outpost of resistance to a planned withdrawal from the occupied territory.

Soldiers earlier fired in the air to quell stone-throwing clashes between the rightists squatting in the vacant Palestinian house and Palestinian inhabitants in the al-Mawasi district enclosed by the Gush Katif bloc of settlements.

The violence gave a foretaste of unrest feared when Israel begins evacuating Gush Katif in August under a plan to ‘disengage’ from conflict with the Palestinians.

In turmoil across Israel, anti-pullout demonstrators blocked main highways in sit-down protests that tied up traffic during the evening rush hour.

Police arrested 150 demonstrators and used water cannon for the first time since such protests began several months ago, dispersing youths blocking the main entrance to Jerusalem.

At the three-storey house in Gaza, the ultranationalists — mostly religious youngsters — set fire to tyres to try to keep the soldiers out. The troops summoned a fire-fighting unit and then moved in, arresting the 30 people inside, the army said.

An army spokeswoman said the raid was launched ‘after a specific security alert about the intention of a (Palestinian) terror organization to attack the Israelis in the structure’.

“I’m a Jew from the Land of Israel. I fear only God,” one of the youths in the house told Reuters Television.

In clashes earlier in the day, four Palestinians were injured, one a teenager felled by a rock thrown from close range by a settler, along with one settler and one soldier in the sandy area around the house.

A soldier crouched to shield the seriously hurt Palestinian teenager from settlers nearby before the Palestinian was taken by ambulance to Khan Younis in Palestinian-administered Gaza.—Reuters