Palestinian police detained 45 supporters of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine after the group claimed responsibility for a terror attack in the Gaza Strip.
Palestine Liberation organization Chairman Yasser Arafat said the Tuesday roundup of DFLP supporters was part of an ongoing fight against “fanatic and extremist forces”.
The DFLP is part of a 10-member Damascus-based alliance of groups militantly opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative. Leaders of the group said in a statement monday that a unit of the Red Brigades Star, the group’s military wing, had ambushed a civilian convoy that same day which was escorting two fuel tankers from Israel to Gaza.
Yevgeny Dromov, an Israeli security guard who was killed in the attack, was buried in the Ashkelon cemetery Tuesday.
“We will not permit these groups to harm, not only the Israelis, but also the Palestinians an the peace process”, Arafat told reporters.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials decided that trucks would no longer deliver gasoline to Gaza, but would drop it off at the Nahal Oz crossing at the Israeli border.
Israeli security sources reportedly said they had established new procedures governing the entry of Israeli citizens into areas of Gaza under Palestinian self-rule. The sources did not, however, provide any details.
“We are not encouraging [Israeli] citizens to enter the strip”, Police Minister Moshe Shahal said Tuesday during a tour of Israeli settlements in Gaza.
In a related event, Israeli security forces, continuing their own crackdown on groups opposed to the peace process, arrested 17 students Tuesday at Hebron University in the West Bank.
All the students were members of the student council. Israeli security officials arrested them for being suspected members of the Hamas fundamentalist movement, which has claimed responsibility for a series of ongoing terror attacks against Israelis.
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