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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon speaks to the annual conference of the Jewish Agency for Israel in Jerusalem on Tuesday. (AP)
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| By israelinsider staff and partners June 28, 2005 |
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Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday said authorities should use an "iron fist" against groups who use violence to resist his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
"We cannot allow gangs to undermine the country," Sharon told a meeting of government ministers. "We have to act with an iron fist against hooligans," he said, according to meeting participants.
Sharon also said rabbis who urge their followers to resist the evacuation should be punished.
The meeting came as anti-withdrawal activists planted oil and nails on a main highway, shutting down the road during morning rush hour, and young settler activists clashed with troops at an outpost in the Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, Sharon sent a stern warning to Jewish settlers opposed to his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, telling them that the use of violence against security forces threatens the existence of Israel.
Sharon spoke as the Israeli army opened disciplinary proceedings against a soldier who refused to participate in an operation this week that demolished 11 abandoned homes in a seaside Gaza settlement.
During the operation in the Shirat Hayam settlement, settlers pushed soldiers, cursed and blocked bulldozers -- giving a potential taste of what could lie ahead during the withdrawal, set to begin in August.
Sharon said settlers who use violence are a minority among the 9,000 Israelis slated for evacuation from their homes in the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements.
"I especially warn against attempts -- by a small lawless, minority... using violence against the army and other security forces," Sharon said at an annual conference for the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency.
He also condemned calls for soldiers to disobey orders to carry out the evacuations. "We all have to remember that the calls to refuse and to disrupt life in Israel endanger the existence of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state," he said.
Defying Sharon's sharp words, a group of settler rabbis repeated their call for soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate settlers, issuing a statement that calls the Gaza withdrawal "immoral".
During Sunday's clash in the Gaza settlement of Shirat Hayam, Cpl. Avi Bieber refused orders to participate in the house demolitions. The army confiscated the U.S.-born soldier's weapon and arrested him.
Bieber faced a disciplinary hearing Tuesday. It was unclear whether the court would make a ruling in the closed-door hearing.
Jewish settlers gathered outside military headquarters in Gaza to protest Bieber's arrest. At the protest, a militant settler, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was detained for questioning, Israeli police said. Ben-Gvir is a member of the outlawed Kach group.
Ben-Gvir and dozens of other hardliners recently took over a seaside hotel in the Gaza settlement of Neve Dekalim, where they vow to resist the evacuation to the end. They have stockpiled food and water and surrounded the abandoned hotel with barbed wire to keep out security forces.
At Shirat Hayam, Jewish settlers have already set up a new outpost aimed at re-establishing their presence in the area. On Tuesday, settlers clashed with Palestinians at the site. One Israeli girl was lightly wounded by a rock thrown by a Palestinian.
Meanwhile, in the Palestinian village of Khan Younis -- adjacent to Neve Dekalim -- Palestinian security forces sealed the entrance of an underground tunnel leading from the camp to the Israeli community.
The Israeli army, which informed Palestinians of the tunnel, said Islamic terrorists had planned to use it to attack the settlement. The army destroyed the section of the tunnel inside the settlement on Monday.
The AP contributed to this report.
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