By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
The Islamic Jihad Wednesday vowed to avenge the IDF's overnight capture of Sheikh Bassam Saadi, who served as the militant movement's chief in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
The movement's leader in Gaza, Abdallah al-Shami, said revenge would be exacted for Sa'adi's capture. "The enemy will pay a dear price for beating Sheikh Bassam Saadi and for its daily crimes on our people," al-Shami said. Wintnesses said Saadi was beaten after he was seized.
Witnesses said Saadi, 42, was a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and that he had been wanted by Israel for two years. Two of his sons had recently been killed in clashes with the Israeli military, Palestinian sources said.
Saadi, arrested by a force of the Golani infantry brigade's elite Egoz unit, is suspected of having dispatched the suicide terrorist who killed Mazal Afari in Moshav Kfar Yabetz in July.
Saadi led opposition within the Jihad to the temporary truce called by militant organizations on June 29 and which later collapsed, Israel Radio said.
In the Jenin raid, soldiers backed by helicopters and tanks raided a section of the refugee camp before dawn and told residents to evacuate the area as they carried out house-to-house searches for suspected militants, the witnesses said.
They said Saadi was found by tracker dogs beneath a car parked outside a mosque. Three other Palestinians were also arrested in Jenin, the witnesses said. Islamic Jihad sources in Gaza said Sa'adi was beaten after he was apprehended.
Islamic Jihad has carried out dozens of attacks, including suicide bombings, that have killed hundreds of Israelis during the three-year-old Palestinian uprising.
Al-Shami said Sa'adi had eluded Israeli arrest for two years, and that his capture "will not weaken the resistance, on the contrary, it will fuel it more and more as the uprising goes into its fourth year."
In other Israeli military raids, troops seized 14 suspected militants near the West Bank cities of Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron, the army said.
Witnesses said soldiers blew up 12 homes and a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Egypt into the Gaza Strip. Palestinian medical officials said three people were wounded in the action.
A Golani arrest campaign in the camp, which began more than two weeks ago, has netted more than 20 wanted fugitives and headed off a car bombing planned for the northern Israel town of Bet Shean, security sources say.
The head of the Jihad organization in the Jenin refugee camp, Fares Wahadeh, was arrested on Friday.
Following an intense Israeli campaign of arrests and assassination attempts directed against Islamic militant commanders, most Islamic Jihad and Hamas officials have gone underground, careful to refrain from disclosing their whereabouts to the press for fear of discovery by Israeli forces.
Saadi was one of the few Islamic militant leaders who maintained contact with the media, often serving as a spokesman for the movement.