GAZA — A convoy carrying Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations was pelted with shoes and sticks by Palestinian protesters when it entered the Gaza Strip from Israel on Thursday, witnesses said.
About 100 men and women who said their family members were being held in Israeli prisons had arrived in buses near a checkpoint in Gaza, a few hundred yards from the Erez crossing, blocking traffic and complaining that Mr. Ban, on his third visit to Gaza, had no plans to meet with them.
A group of about five young men threw shoes at the cars, a gesture of scorn reminiscent of the action of a protester in Baghdad who lobbed shoes at President George W. Bush in 2008.
Women removed wooden staves from a protest banner and hurled them at the armored vehicles, witnesses said, before security officials from Hamas, the group that runs Gaza, moved the demonstrators away, allowing the convoy to pass.
Khaled Salah, who was deported to Gaza from the West Bank town of Bethlehem in 2002, told a local radio station that he collected shoes and threw them at the convoy because Mr. Ban was biased toward Israel.
Referring to a nearby Israeli city that has been the frequent target of Palestinian rocket fire, he said that Mr. Ban “visited Sderot and showed sympathy with its people, but he doesn’t want to hear and see our suffering.”
Jamal Farwana, a spokesman for the families of Gaza prisoners, told The Associated Press, “We came here in a symbolic message to Mr. Ban Ki-moon that Palestinians from Gaza want to have the right to visit their children and loved ones in Israeli jails.”
“He should make more of an effort to release the prisoners, and we wonder why every time he avoids meeting families of Palestinian prisoners,” Mr. Farwana said.
In a statement, Mr. Ban’s spokesman said: “The secretary general is concerned about the situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Last night he met with the Palestinian minister of prisoners’ affairs, Issa Karake, and received a letter outlining specific concerns.” He added, “The United Nations continues to call on Israel to abide by its obligations under international law.”
At a news conference later, Mr. Ban called for maintaining a cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups here, though the cease-fire is a fragile one. He also called on Israel to open commercial crossing points with Gaza for more export and import. The cease-fire, the opening of crossings and the ending of the Palestinian factional split are all essential “for the continued progress for the people of Gaza,” he said.
Mr. Ban spent some of his brief visit in Gaza inaugurating a United Nations housing project in the south of the tiny Mediterranean enclave.
His schedule included no plans to meet with officials from Hamas, which Israel, the United States and most European countries classify as a terrorist group.
Mr. Ban traveled here from Jerusalem, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before talks in the West Bank on Wednesday with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and other officials. He had earlier met with King Abdullah II in Jordan at the start of a regional visit intended to revitalize the largely moribund peace process.
On Wednesday, he urged Israel to refrain from further settlement construction and to offer good-will gestures to the Palestinians. Mr. Abbas told reporters after his meeting with Mr. Ban that the Palestinians rejected any further Israeli settlement construction and “would not accept it today or tomorrow.”
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