[link|http://www.forbes.com/business/healthcare/feeds/ap/2006/03/14/ap2592860.html|Forbes.com]

Israeli forces driving bulldozers and firing tank shells burst into a Palestinian prison Tuesday and removed dozens of inmates in a raid targeting prisoners convicted of killing an Israeli Cabinet minister.

Furious Palestinians attacked offices linked to America and Europe, torching the British Council building in Gaza City and kidnapping a foreign employee of the Red Cross in Gaza. Gunmen also seized four guests - including two South Korean journalists and a French woman - from a Gaza City hotel.

The Palestinians blamed the Jericho raid on the British and Americans, who removed their monitors from the jail just before the Israeli raid. There were a total of 200 prisoners and guards in the jail at the time of the raid.

The prison was a joint Palestine/Isreal operation for holding some Palestine militants that had been captured by the PA for crimes comitted in Isreal. The PA wouldn't turn them over to the Isrealis for trial and prison, but they where too important and too guilty to just let go. So a deal was cut to put them in prison in Palestine. The PA ran the prison, but the US and Isreal had moniters in the prison to make sure the prisoners where confined and controled.

Isreal seems to have decided that with Hamas in power now this was too risky and launched a raid on the prison to capture them. In the process they set lose more then 100 other Palestinian prisoners who Isreal didn't care about. And set off a new wave of violence across the PA.

This is one of those moves that may be in Isreal's short term interest but undercuts any chance at a real peace.

Jay