Israelis opposed to Gaza pull-out attack former PM's tomb

ISRAELI police were yesterday investigating the desecration of the graves of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his widow.

Authorities said vandals had scrawled "murderous dog" in Hebrew on the tomb of Rabin at the weekend. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a far-right Jew incensed by his land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians.

The name of Rabin’s wife Leah, who died of cancer in 2000, was sprayed over on an adjacent headstone.

The defacing of the graves, at the Jewish state’s most revered military cemetery at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, stirred new Israeli fears of civil strife ahead of a planned withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip this summer.

Left-wing lawmakers suggested that Jewish ultra-nationalists opposed to prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians by withdrawing from some occupied land were stepping up their protests and could turn to bloodshed.

"We are not dealing with the perpetrators of the previous crime but with the perpetrators of the next one," Ran Cohen, of the leftist Yahad party, told the Jerusalem Post, alluding to concerns that Mr Sharon could also be targeted for assassination.

Polls show most Israelis support Mr Sharon’s plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank starting in July.