MIDDLE EAST: Using language that ominously echoed pronouncements delegitimising efforts by the late prime minister, Mr Yitzhak Rabin, at peacemaking, a group of right-wing Israeli rabbis yesterday urged all Israeli Jews to do their utmost to prevent the dismantling of settlements, the relinquishing of "biblical territory" in the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state. David Horovitz reports from Jerusalem
The rabbis' statement, issued as the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, prepared to leave for Aqaba tomorrow for summit talks with President George Bush and the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), came amid indications that Mr Sharon is preparing to order the evacuation of up to 20 illegal settlement outposts peppered across the West Bank.
The US is pressing for up to 100 barely-populated outposts, many of them erected at the sites where Israeli motorists were shot dead by Palestinian gunmen, to be dismantled in the near future and for all building at the more established settlements to be frozen.
Israeli security sources have indicated concern that extremists may take the law into their own hands in an effort to thwart the new US-encouraged effort at renewing Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.
Security around Mr Sharon and many leading politicians is already high. It was revealed yesterday that his son, Omri, also a member of the Knesset, has now been given protection as well.
The rabbis' statement - its signatories including a former Israeli chief rabbi, Avraham Shapira - asserted that the establishment of a Palestinian state would constitute a breach of divine will; that no government had the authority to approve it; and that those who acted to prevent it would be fulfilling God's will.
Mr Sharon has already reluctantly endorsed limited Palestinian statehood and is expected to address the issue again in his closing statement at the Aqaba talks; he also spoke last week about Israeli "occupation" being untenable.
Coincidentally, the Israeli attorney general last night moved to indict a right-wing rabbi, Yitzhak Ginzburg, for alleged anti-Arab incitement.
The attorney general had previously rejected petitions to indict the same rabbi over publication of a book that featured praise for Baruch Goldstein, the West Bank settler who killed 29 Palestinians at prayer in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994.
The official leadership of the Jewish settlement movement is organising what it hopes will be a mass demonstration tomorrow night in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square where Mr Rabin was gunned down.
Organisers plan to broadcast Mr Sharon's own past stirring speeches, urging them to "grab the hilltops" of the West Bank.
Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the Finance Minister, has rebuffed an invitation from Mr Sharon to join him in Aqaba, noting that he opposes the US-backed "road map" to Palestinian statehood, and indeed Palestinian statehood altogether.
In his remarks at Aqaba, meanwhile, Mr Abbas is expected to demand an end to the "armed Intifada", including all attacks on Israeli civilians, and to pledge to do his utmost to thwart further attacks.
Leaders of Hamas in Israeli jails are understood to be backing at least a temporary ceasefire; Mr Abbas has said he hopes to have a truce in place within two or three weeks.
In an unprecedentedly upbeat assessment, the head of the Israeli army's military intelligence wing, Gen Avraham Zeevi-Farkash, said yesterday he fully believed Mr Abbas was bent on honouring this pledge.
He also said he believed there was "a high chance" that the Intifada conflict that has flared since autumn 2000 would soon come to an end.
In the interim, however, Jerusalem police were on maximum alert last night, having received what were described as "specific" warnings about a known Palestinian cell that was said to be planning an attack in the city in the next day or two.