Sharon 'may be target for assassins' as Gaza tensions rise

WITH tensions in Israel rising in the run-up to next month's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Moshe Katsav, the president, warned yesterday that opponents of the pullout might try to assassinate the prime minister, Ariel Sharon.

Mr Katsav said that statements by rabbis sharply opposing the withdrawal as violating Jewish law could be misconstrued by extremists.

"In the struggle over disengagement, someone is likely to distort the rabbis' messages and undertake to assassinate Mr Sharon," Mr Katsav warned.

Concern about extremist actions heightened last week after fundamentalists took over an Arab house near a Jewish settlement in Gaza, daubed anti-Islamic graffiti on a wall and attacked a Palestinian youth. Seeking to win back public opinion eroded by such images, settler leaders have formulated an anti-withdrawal charter.

They specified that there should be no physical or verbal violence against security forces and that settlers should hand in weapons before forces come to evacuate them.

"Our efforts have to be in line with the spirit of the nation," the charter stated. "It is this spirit, which roused, that can accomplish the cancellation of the plan. Every public action must be evaluated in light of this consideration and not out of anger or despair."

Noam Arnon, a leader of the hardline Jewish settlement of Hebron, wrote on a settler website yesterday that those who took over the Arab house had undermined the case against the pullout.