Diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners are leaving the West Bank and Gaza Strip as cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that were published in several European newspapers sparked outrage in the Muslim world.
Palestinian gunmen burst into a West Bank hotel and abducted a 21-year-old German teacher in Nablus on Thursday evening, and Gaza militants surrounded European headquarters in the Strip. But although the kidnapping was short-lived - within an hour, Palestinian police nabbed the gunmen and freed the teacher - it was just one of a series of worrying incidents that spurred foreigners' decisions to get out of the territories.
In Gaza, foreign diplomats and journalists began pulling out of the Palestinian areas and two countries closed diplomatic offices Thursday after masked Palestinian gunmen, incensed by the depictions of the prophet, threatened to kidnap foreigners.
The furor cuts to the question of which is more sacred in the Western world - freedom of expression or respect for religious beliefs. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the protests came just a week after Hamas defeated the ruling Fatah party in parliament elections and prepared to form the next government.
Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Hungary have reprinted caricatures originally published in Denmark, arguing that press freedom is more important than the protests and boycotts they have provoked. One cartoon shows the Muslim prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.
Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.
The Danish foreign ministry in Copenhagen said all Danes, except for two diplomats, have left the West Bank and Gaza in recent days. The Danish representative office in the West Bank was to be closed Friday because of the threats, a local diplomat said, and the situation would be reassessed after the weekend.
Norway closed its representative office in the West Bank to the public on Thursday because of the threats, but said the 23-member staff remains on the job.
Danish and French members of international observer team at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt stayed away from Gaza on Thursday, and instead worked from the group's headquarters in the nearby Israeli city of Ashkelon, said a spokesman, Julio de La Guardia.
Foreign reporters either pulled out of Gaza Thursday or canceled plans to go to the volatile coastal strip.
The uproar over the images intensified Thursday. In Gaza City, militants briefly surrounded the local office of the EU Commission, and some Palestinian shoppers said they would boycott European products.
One of the militants, flanked by two masked men with assault rifles, said the governments of Germany, France, Norway and Denmark must apologize for the cartoons by Thursday evening. If no apology was issued, the gunmen said they would target citizens of the four countries and shut down media offices, including the French news agency. "Any citizens of these countries, who are present in Gaza, will put themselves in danger," the gunman said.
In one unusual twist, Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas leader, visited a Gaza church Thursday and promised protection to Christians, after Fatah gunmen threatened to target churches as part of their protests. Zahar offered to dispatch gunmen from Hamas' military wing to guard the church. "You are our brothers," Zahar told Father Manuel Musallam of the Holy Family Church.
Palestinian security officials said Thursday they would try to protect
foreigners in Gaza, but that gave little comfort, considering the 19
foreigners kidnapped in Gaza in recent months, all of whom were released unharmed.
Outgoing Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia on Thursday condemned the caricatures, saying they "provoke all Muslims everywhere in the world." He asked gunmen not to attack foreigners. "But we warn that emotions may flare in these very sensitive issues."
