GAZA CITY — Western embassies have warned nationals to leave the
Gaza Strip amid the threat of Palestinian attack or abduction.
The warning was relayed by several Western embassies after two engineers
from Austria and Britain were abducted by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The engineers were said to have been taken from Gaza City on early Wednesday
to the nearby refugee camp of Bureij, Middle East Newsline reported.
"There are no Palestinian police in the streets and no order," a Western
diplomat said. "In such a case, any foreigner, particularly from the West,
could be a target."
Diplomatic sources said the British Consulate in Jerusalem worked on
Wednesday to win the release of the British engineers. They said the two
engineers, employees of a water purification company based in Gaza City,
were abducted by a Palestinian family named Issa that sought
the release of jailed relatives. The relatives had been arrested as part of
an investigation into the death of an inmate of a Palestinian Authority
prison in June.
PA Interior Minister Nasser Yusef was briefed on the abduction and
pledged to free the two Westerners, said to have been unharmed. The sources
said the ministry has contacted the Issa family to win the release of the
Westerners.
The United States has prevented its diplomats from entering the Gaza
Strip since the killing of three U.S. embassy security guards in 2003.
Despite numerous pledges, the PA has failed to arrest and prosecute the
suspected killers, believed to be members of the ruling Fatah movement.
Several thousand Westerners were said to be living in the Gaza Strip,
many of them employed by the United Nations, foreign liasion offices and
non-government organizations. The number of Westerners was expected to
increase significantly under a G8 plan to invest $3 billion in the PA over
the next three years.
Yusef has pledged to impose a crackdown on insurgency groups and
unlicensed weapons after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in
August. The ministry has sought to organize and train a 5,000-member force
to impose control on the area of the 21 Israeli communities slated for
evacuation.
