Rhetoric From Right Alarms Israeli Leaders

The Israeli parliament met Tuesday night to discuss reports that far-right Jewish activists were inciting violence to oppose the removal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip.

President Moshe Katsav earlier urged rabbis and Jewish leaders in Gaza and the West Bank to prevent violence by an “extreme rightist minority” determined to block the planned withdrawal from settlements in the two areas.

The actions Tuesday came after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who proposed the pullout, acknowledged concerns for his safety after warnings of growing extremism among opponents of the plan.

“It pains me that as someone who all his life protected Jews in the wars of Israel, I now need defense against Jews, for fear someone might try to harm me,” Sharon, a former general, told centrist political allies Monday night in remarks quoted in the newspaper Haaretz.

Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said: “He’s concerned about the atmosphere, the general attitude that this could very quickly deteriorate into action. He’s pledged that he will carry through -- without a civil war.”

Internal Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told an Israeli television station Tuesday night that he feared that some opponents might have decided to try to stop the withdrawal by assassinating a key government figure, such as Sharon, or an official of the national police or military.

Sharon, who through much of his political career has been a major supporter of the settlers movement, has proposed withdrawing Jews from all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank. The move, which would reduce Israel’s exposure to attack in Gaza, has been criticized by Palestinian officials who fear that the Israeli leader is seeking to unilaterally draw the borders of their future state.

Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet, the country’s domestic security agency, said Sunday that there were increasing signs that resistance to the planned pullout could turn violent.

Atty. Gen. Menachem Mazuz said he would convene a meeting of judicial officials and others this week to discuss possible criminal prosecution in cases of alleged incitement.

The comments have sparked a debate over the proper bounds of resistance to the pullout and brought protests from rabbis and activists from the West Bank and Gaza, who said the warnings of extremism were baseless and incendiary.

“One of the pillars of a democratic regime is that people be allowed to express themselves in a nonviolent manner,” said Rabbi Mordechai Rabinovitch, secretary of the rabbis council for the West Bank and Gaza.

Rabinovitch said attempts to crack down on protest could spur confrontations between settlers and Israeli forces.

Opponents plan to protest the pullout plan, approved in principle by the Cabinet last month, using various tactics that include conducting a petition drive and forming a human chain from Jerusalem to the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza.

The government has yet to approve the evacuations, which Sharon wants to complete by late next year. About 7,500 settlers live in the Gaza Strip and a few hundred inhabit the four West Bank settlements slated for evacuation.

Fears of violence were stirred last week after a Jerusalem rabbi was reported to have declared that anyone removing Jewish settlements would be subject to the death penalty under an ancient Jewish law known as din rodef.

The rabbi, Avigdor Neventzal, said, however, that the law could no longer be enforced, according to news reports. He did not mention Sharon by name.

The statement nonetheless stoked memories of the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a law student opposed to Israeli concessions under the Oslo peace agreement with the Palestinians. The gunman, Yigal Amir, said he acted after hearing right-wing rabbis declare that anyone ceding the Land of Israel to non-Jews may be killed under din rodef.

Uri Elitzur, chief of staff under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fueled the latest controversy Monday when he said during a radio interview that “it is a lot more forbidden to evacuate settlements than to beat up soldiers.”

The remarks drew a warning from Justice Minister Tommy Lapid, a pullout supporter. He said Israeli law safeguards free speech but bars incitement.

“If people exploit this very liberal policy on the part of the Justice Ministry and use the freedom of speech to incite to murder, to din rodef and to injure soldiers, then I assume that they would be testing the attorney general’s tolerance,” Lapid said.

In Washington, meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom on Tuesday to pick up the pace of the promised dismantling of settlement outposts in the West Bank.

“I explained to the minister that we have some disappointment in the rate at which outposts had been removed,” Powell said.

Shalom defended Israel’s record, saying, “We removed tens of outposts already. There are 28 left.”

In other developments, four Palestinians and an Israeli military officer died during an Israeli raid in a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus. Two of the Palestinians killed were identified by Israeli sources as militant leaders suspected of dispatching a suicide bomber last week who was thwarted.

But the military acknowledged that two civilians also were killed: an engineering professor at An Najah National University in Nablus and his 16-year-old son. The two were at home when a Palestinian gunman took cover in their apartment building, the army said. They were killed during the ensuing combat, according to the military.

The professor, identified as 50-year-old Khalid Salah, earned his doctorate at UC Davis in 1985 and held permanent-resident status in the United States, An Najah officials said. Three Israeli soldiers were wounded during the early morning fighting.

In Gaza, Israeli forces fatally shot two Palestinians who hurled grenades and opened fire along a road to the Gush Katif settlements, the military said.

Times staff writer Mary Curtius in Washington contributed to this report.