The Jordan Valley north of Jericho erupted Tuesday into clouds of black smoke and the anger of Israeli struggling against Israeli.
Clashes broke out when the Israel Defense Force moved to dismantle giant roadblocks and disperse illegal demonstrations of settlers, who felt threatened by the onset of Palestinian self-rule in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.
Likud Knesset member Ariel Sharon was on hand to support the settlers as they burned tires and resisted IDF calls to clear the road of their huge cement blocks.
He described the demonstrations as “the peaceful, passive expression of opposition to what this government is doing, leading our nation into the greatest danger it has ever faced.”
Sharon had been defense minister under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, when Jews were forcibly removed from the settlement of Yamit in the course of the Likud-led withdrawal from the Sinai following the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement in 1979.
Some settlers were dragged off by military police, and in the ensuing scuffles four were hurt, allegedly by blows from rifle butts.
“This is a police state!” shouted one protester whose wife had been arrested. “Damn Rabin, we’re here to stay!”
Leading rabbis belonging to the National Religious Party have meanwhile stated that the Israeli-Palestinian agreement due to be signed Wednesday violates halachah, or Jewish law.
The rabbis called upon Israelis to resist its implementation “with all their might.”
Rabbi Shlomo Goren, a former Israeli chief rabbi, called for “a day of fasting” to protest an “agreement that has no halachic validity.”
But on the way to Ben-Gurion Airport on Tuesday, from where he was to fly to Cairo for Wednesday’s signing of the Israeli-PLO agreement, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin found time to stop off at a conference of progressive rabbis meeting to help promote tourism.
“The most important thing,” he said in response to their applauding his mission to Cairo, “is to further the cause of national unity.
“Jerusalem,” he reminded them, “had been destroyed in ancient times because of wanton fratricidal hatred.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
