Rabbis urge Israeli troops to desert and thwart Gaza pullout
AFP
Date: 03-31-05
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli rabbis and right-wing groups called on soldiers to desert the military in a fresh attempt to thwart the planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and closing of all Jewish settlements there.
The incitement to disobey came as Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas vowed to crack down on armed militants after gunmen from a radical faction loosely affiliated to his Fatah party opened fire at his West Bank headquarters.
Dozens of rabbis and opponents of the pullout published a document calling on conscript, career and reservist soldiers "not to present themselves for army missions after the (Passover) holiday" and thereby avoid operations which would support the controversial pullout.
Passover, one of the most important festivals in the Jewish calendar and which marks the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, begins in late April and lasts for eight days. The Gaza pullout is scheduled to start in late July.
The call came just days after the settler lobby and its allies suffered two bitter defeats at the hands of the Israeli parliament, robbing them of their last chance to scupper the pullout through political means.
On Monday, the Knesset voted down a bill which would have demanded the holding of a referendum on the withdrawal. And one day later, MPs gave their seal of approval for the state budget, removing the last legislative hurdle in the way of the plan to clear all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip as well as four isolated outposts in the West Bank.
Parliament has now broken up for spring recess until early May.
Among those issuing the call were former chief rabbi Avraham Shapira, considered the most important spiritual figure for religious nationalists.
But MP Zevulun Orlev, head of the right-wing National Religious Party which is also against the withdrawal, rejected the call for soldiers to stay away, saying his movement did not believe in refusing military orders.
"Those behind this call are a few extremists in Judea and Samaria," he told army radio, using the Biblical term for the West Bank.
Should all other means to thwart their evacuation fail, settler leaders have come up with another plan -- establishing a permanent refugee camp by the beach in southern Israel between the towns of Ashkelon and Ashdod, the Maariv daily reported.
This would see all residents from the main Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza moving to a "third-world" style tent encampment, the paper said.
"The government will be unable to hide the tent camp from the news media in Israel and the world. When the world sees how Jews were uprooted from their homes, everybody will understand the scale of the tragedy," said Yaki Azrieli, one of those behind the project.
"We have no doubt that it will shock the world and the State of Israel."
In the main West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian administration denounced gunmen from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades who demonstrated there late on Wednesday, firing into the air in the courtyard of the Palestinian leadership headquarters before being ordered to quit the Muqataa compound.
The gunmen then ran riot through the streets, firing bursts with automatic weapons, damaging several restaurants and forcing a shopping centre to close.
"The Palestinian Authority has taken urgent steps to reestablish security, deal with the perpetrators and protect public property. Units are deployed to prevent any new aggression," said a statement on Thursday.
The incident was symptomatic of the "armed chaos" reigning in the occupied territories, which the new Palestinian administration has pledged to crush to restore order and convince Israel it is able to exercise firm security control.
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