‘Nation should condemn settlers’

JERUSALEM - Vice Premier Shimon Peres has launched a bitter attack on right-wing protestors who have been barricaded by police in Kfar Maimon, saying they undermine Israel's democratic basis with their latest actions.

"Today the army and police represent the unity of the nation and its future, and are defending the democratic principle, while the settlers are attempting to create anarchy, and are destroying the basis of law in Israel," Peres told members of the ministerial committee for disengagement affairs. 

"The whole nation should condemn the ways of the settlers, who themselves have ironically been awarded IDF protection for years. They should have retreated to their homes,” said Peres.

According to the Vice Premier “Israel’s security forces have never before seen the provocation of recent days, which is taking place while Qassam rockets and mortars are still falling. It is an insult to tie up 20,000 security personnel while this is happening."

'Dying throes of anti-pullout opponents'

Meanwhile, sources at the Knesset described Thursday’s attempt to pass a law to delay the disengagement plan as the “dying throes of anti-pullout protestors in parliament.”

The government coalition is expected to win the vote even without help from ultra-religious parties, after the “Degel HaTorah party said it would vote in favor of delaying the pullout.

On Tuesday, the leader of the Lithuanian Orthodox movement, rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, said that his party would vote to delay because it was guided by the Jewish principle of doing everything to save lives.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, of the Shas movement, joined Elishiv’s stance, and has also come out in support of a delay of the pullout.