Israeli militants warn of civil war over Gaza
Militant settlers warned of violence and civil war after Israel’s parliament cleared away a major obstacle in front of a planned pullout from all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank this summer, handily defeating a call for a referendum.
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, following Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s lead, rejected the plebiscite proposal yesterday by a vote of 72-39. Sharon had denounced the call for a referendum as a last-ditch effort by the settlers and their backers – many in his own Likud party – to scuttle the pullout.
Polls show about two-thirds of Israelis in favour of the withdrawal, roughly the same proportion as the Knesset vote. But the settlers, far from giving in, are simply redirecting their efforts to demonstrations and possible violence.
Thousands of settlers, many of them teenagers, demonstrated in front of the Knesset during the debate and vote. When the wide margin was announced, the settlers seemed momentarily deflated. Leaders called off the second day of the planned 36-hour vigil and said they would abandon their efforts to change the parliament’s mind.
But as their options narrowed, their rhetoric heated up.
“The Knesset has voted for violence, for civil war, for the next political assassination in Israel,” said Yehuda Glick, once the spokesman for a government ministry, referring to the 1995 murder of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an extremist Jew opposed to Rabin’s compromises for peace.
A statement by the Settlers Council charged that Sharon ”brutally prevented the possibility of allowing the people to decide” about a referendum, warning of a “violent confrontation and civil war.”
With the referendum proposal’s failure and the expected approval of the 2005 state budget later this week, the pullout appears to have weathered all legislative threats against it.
The battle now moves to Israel’s Supreme Court, which agreed yesterday to hear a challenge to the law providing the legal framework for the Gaza withdrawal. The hearing is set for April 8 before an expanded panel of 11 judges, the Courts Administration said. Such a large panel is generally reserved for landmark cases.
The vote exposed the deep divisions in Likud, a hawkish party filled with settlers and their allies that was stunned by Sharon’s sudden reversal last year of his long-time policy of backing settlement building. Sharon says the pullout will help Israel hang onto parts of the West Bank.
