Right-wing Israelis sealed shut some government offices with superglue and chains early today as part of a campaign against Israel's plan to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip, police said.
Police arrested five 16-year-olds suspected of involvement in sealing an Education Ministry building and a courthouse in the Jerusalem area as well as a stock-trading watchdog office, a police spokesman said.
Israel's Channel 2 television showed a queue of people waiting outside a sealed Interior Ministry office in a Tel Aviv suburb with a pamphlet left on the door that read: "We shall not let the deportation happen!"
Israeli media reported an unidentified pro-settler group said it had sealed 150 public offices in protest at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to uproot settlements from occupied Gaza and the northern West Bank in August. Sunday is the start of the working week in Israel.
The spokesman said police had foiled an attempt to seal an office responsible for dispensing compensation to the 9,000 settlers set to be evacuated from 21 enclaves in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank.
Most of the settlers have vowed to passively resist evacuation from land they see as a biblical birthright. Supporters, many of them far-right teenagers, have stepped up protests against the withdrawal in recent weeks by disrupting traffic with blockades of burning tyres.
Police arrested 15 Israelis for blocking the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway on Saturday night, Israel Radio said.