Israeli police and soldiers Thursday stormed a hotel in the Gaza Strip and ousted the pullout opponents inside, Israeli Ha'aretz daily reported.

Some 2,000 Israeli soldiers and Border Police went room-to-room to remove the opponents who had barricaded themselves inside the Maoz Yam hotel in the settlement of Neveh Dekalim for several weeks.

Witnesses said police broke into the hotel and began carrying rightist squatters kicking and screaming out of it.

The raid lasted for about 10 minutes with no injuries reported. Most of the activists in the hotel did not resist and four of them were arrested.

The hotel has been a bastion for around 100 extreme anti-pullout right-wing activists, who had surrounded the area with barbed wire and stockpiled food.

Prior to the storming, the right-wing activists in the hotel issued a statement saying that they had decided to be against violence and would only use passive resistance.

The hotel raid came a few hours after Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declared the Gaza Strip a closed military zone and banned the access to Gaza for Israeli citizens who are not Gaza residents.

The closure move is designed to prevent far-right extremists from carrying out violent protests against the disengagement, which is expected to evacuate 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in northern West Bank around mid-August.

The plan has been strongly protested by Israeli rightists who view it as a betrayal of their biblical lands where the Palestinians want a statehood.

Source: Xinhua