Israeli combat helicopters fired rockets and machine guns at the Palestinian preventive security building

GAZA CITY, November 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – In an overnight raid on Gaza City, Israel sent tanks and helicopter gunships against Palestinian security forces in Gaza early Monday, November 18.

Four Palestinians were wounded in the raid, as Israeli occupation forces clashed with armed Palestinians as the forces surrounded and then partially destroyed a base of the Palestinian preventive security forces.

Israeli combat helicopters fired rockets and machine guns at the preventive security building in the southern Tal el-Hawa district of Gaza City, hitting it by rocket at least twice, Palestinian security sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Then some 30 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, accompanied by a bulldozer, moved in just before midnight and encircled it.

The bulldozer demolished the perimeter wall before the tanks rolled in through the breach and fired at the targeted building, said AFP.

The building was partially destroyed and six nearby buildings were damaged.

Four Palestinians – three policemen and a cameraman – were wounded by the Israeli army during the incursion.

The Israeli army justified the destruction of the Palestinian preventive security forces by repeating accusations of terrorism, which it blames on all sections of the Palestinian people: the Palestinian Authority, resistance movements and ordinary Palestinians.

Israeli occupation soldiers check the documents of handcuffed Palestinians

"The preventive security in the Gaza Strip is involved in terrorism," Israeli Brigadier General Israel Ziv alleged. "Interrogation of Palestinians arrested and this overnight raid proved that," he continued.

In the two-year Palestinian Intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation, "many men who have come out of its ranks have taken part in the production of arms or in attacks alongside … [Islamic resistance movement] Hamas or [Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s resistance movement] Fatah," Ziv said of the preventive security force.

During the latest overnight Gaza incursion, "we found many arms at the base of this organization, including dozens of mortars, grenade launchers, a Qassam missile, a weapons production facility and an enormous amount of subversive material," he added.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who retired as army commander in July, also said the Gaza raid revealed "close links between" Palestinian resistance groups and Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

"The army raid last night proves once again the close links between the Palestinian Authority's security services and … Hamas and Islamic Jihad," he said in a statement.

During the raid on Gaza, the occupation army also destroyed the house of a Palestinian they had abducted two days earlier, AFP reported.

Some Israeli tanks were damaged by explosives laid in their path, but none were destroyed, the army said.

Israeli forces also abducted 12 Palestinians during a security sweep throughout the West Bank overnight, the occupation army said in a statement, according to AFP.

Palestinian security sources said two of the men seized were the heads of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah resistance movement in the city. They said Nasser Bedawi, 36, and Rayed Rowash, 27, were arrested in Nablus' Balata refugee camp.

Meanwhile, Iran's foreign ministry firmly rejected allegations that the Islamic republic has been providing military assistance to the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, IRNA reported Monday.

"We only give moral and spiritual support to the Palestinian people," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying.

The Israeli media, notably radio Israel, has accused Iran of allegedly helping Hamas produce a new rocket.

Both Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad have representative offices in Tehran. 

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