Right-Wing Protests Jam Highways Across Israel

In the biggest and most disruptive protests yet against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to relinquish the Gaza Strip, thousands of right-wing demonstrators snarled evening rush-hour traffic across the country Monday, using burning tires and their own bodies to block highways and urban thoroughfares.

Police detained about 300 protesters, some of them barely in their teens.

Israeli officials, meanwhile, disclosed that work would begin in the next few weeks to extend Israel’s separation barrier to enclose the West Bank’s largest Jewish settlement, a move that could raise tensions with the Bush administration. The United States has spoken out against Israel’s plan to build more homes in Maale Adumim, the settlement in question.

The rapid timetable for enclosing the settlement, reported in Monday’s editions of the newspaper Maariv and confirmed by government sources, appeared to be part of a wider effort by Sharon to consolidate Israel’s hold on major Jewish population centers in the West Bank before the Gaza withdrawal.

As the mid-August pullout date approaches, opponents are adopting ever more aggressive methods. In addition to staging coordinated highway protests from the northern coastal town of Netanya to the southern desert city of Beersheba, demonstrators threw stones at police in Jerusalem, a new tactic.

For the second day in a row, Israeli bomb squads rushed to investigate two suspicious parcels planted in public places and found to contain only rocks, along with notes protesting the pullout. The withdrawal “will blow up in our faces,” one said.

Israel has recently been free of Palestinian suicide bombings, which have been a regular feature of the last four years. Any bomb scare tends to rattle nerves.

Israeli authorities said Monday that in recent weeks, five right-wing activists had been detained and questioned in connection with alleged plots to strike the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s walled Old City with antitank missiles, grenades or a small aircraft.

The site, which is holy to Muslims and Jews, has been a catalyst for violence, and any attack on it would undoubtedly spark fury throughout the Muslim world.

The five men were conditionally released, Israel Radio said, allegedly because they had not yet taken any concrete steps toward carrying out a strike.

Israeli officials have expressed fears that extremist settlers or their supporters would try to block the uprooting of the 21 settlements in Gaza, plus four smaller ones in the northern West Bank, by provoking a violent confrontation with Palestinians or clashing with Israeli authorities.

Divisiveness over the pullout appears to be growing, even though polls indicate that a majority of Israelis still support leaving Gaza.

The coastal territory, where about 8,000 settlers live among more than 1.2 million Palestinians, is regarded by many here as a quagmire, far too costly in financial terms and in the toll on young Israeli troops.

Although Israeli police have sought to keep tabs on right-wing groups opposed to the pullout, the scope and nature of Monday’s protests appeared to catch authorities off guard. Some of the demonstrators were girls as young as 12, who screamed abuse at police who waded into stalled traffic to drag protesters away.

Leaders of the mainstream settler movement showed signs of unease that wildcat protests like those on Monday could harden public opinion against them.

The Yesha Council, a group representing about a quarter of a million settlers in the West Bank, issued a statement disavowing any knowledge of the highway protests.

The day’s events underscored the shifting interplay of the Gaza withdrawal and Israel’s territorial ambitions in the West Bank. Sharon’s government had for some time made clear its intention to build a “sleeve” of its barrier that would take in Maale Adumim, a sprawling suburban enclave just outside Jerusalem that is home to more than 30,000 Israelis.

Last month, Israel’s unveiling of plans to build more than 3,500 housing units in and near the settlement drew unusually sharp U.S. criticism when Sharon met in Texas with President Bush. Palestinians bitterly oppose the expansion, saying it will choke off north-south travel in the West Bank, leaving them in control of “islands” of disconnected land that will be impossible to stitch into a state.

Maariv, which reported that bulldozers were expected to break ground by early June on the barrier around Maale Adumim, said Sharon was counting on U.S. reluctance to speak out against him as he weathered fierce opposition to the pullout.

“The timing of the construction of the new fence is hardly coincidental,” reporter Amir Rapaport wrote. “The goal of the initiative is to establish ‘facts on the ground’ even before the [withdrawal] plan is carried out, on the assumption that the United States and Europe will be far more assertive in their opposition ... after the plan has been executed.”

U.S. policy does not oppose the existence of an Israeli barrier, citing its success in keeping out suicide bombers. But American officials have repeatedly voiced opposition to appropriation of Palestinian territory to build what will ultimately be a 425-mile network of wire fencing, concrete walls, patrol roads and watchtowers.

“The idea of a security fence does not trouble us, but when a fence or barrier is being built on disputed land, that is a problem for us,” U.S. Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem expressed renewed concern that the barrier’s route would prejudice the outcome of any territorial negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Symbolically, it’s a very important step,” said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the group. “The barrier is part of a process of consolidating Israeli control over a whole swath of land.”