may try to assassinate him. Shimon Peres said he feared the prime minister will become the victim of "a growing far-right fury" over a planned withdrawal from Gaza next year.
"I am very fearful of the incitement, of the harsh things that are being said," Peres, supporter of Sharon’s pullout plan, told the daily Maariv. Peres, head of the center-left Labor party, stressed the divisive atmosphere recalled the climate when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed in 1995 by an ultra-nationalist Jew opposed to his peace deals with the Palestinians.
Adding to Sharon’s troubles was a call from scores of rabbis on observant soldiers to refuse to obey orders to evacuate Jewish settlements under the planned Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip.
The army’s Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, condemned the protesting rabbis saying "insubordination is dangerous to us as an army, as a society and as a nation," news reports said. "Don’t put us in impossible situations," he reportedly said in remarks broadcast throughout Israel.
"DISENGAGEMENT PLAN"
Under Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s "disengagement plan," Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements next year, removing 8,600 settlers from their homes. Tensions remain high in the area, after an Israeli soldier was slain in a drive-by shooting at an isolated settlement between the Palestinian towns of Tulkarem and Jenin, near the West Bank settlements slated for evacuation, the military said.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militant group tied to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, claimed responsibility, The Associated Press (AP) news agency reported. But the director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees singled out Israel Tuesday, October 18, for what he called "using excessive force against Palestinians in Gaza."
"I want to call upon Israel not to use this kind of extreme and excessive force which resulted in the death of dozens and made hundreds homeless," said Peter Hansen while he toured the Gaza camp of Jabalya and the town of Beit Lahya.
HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS
"I also want to call upon the Israeli and Palestinian sides to reject violence," he added. His views reflected concern expressed by the U.S. based human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW), which claimed Monday, October 18, that Israeli troops have destroyed hundreds of houses and left over 16,000 thousand Palestinians homeless in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military says it has destroyed an estimated 100 smuggling tunnels during those operations, but HRW claimed destroying houses was not the only way to find these underground operations. Reporters said that Israeli tanks and bulldozers have razed parts of the Jabalya refugee camp and other areas bordering Israel, apparently to prevent rockets being fired into Israeli towns and settlements.
Middle East commentators say Israel wants to hunt down militants to prevent then of claiming a "victory" when its forces and settlers will pull out from land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. The army is reportedly planning to build a mock settlement at a desert base to train troops to remove hard-line settlers, who may barricade themselves inside homes and synagogues or even resist violently.
