JERUSALEM - Israel`s new domestic intelligence supremo said Tuesday he would not allow "Jewish terrorism" to prevail, as extremists appeared bent on waging a guerrilla war against the planned pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Yuval Diskin, who took over this week as head of the Shin Beth agency, was quoted by Israeli media as telling MPs "we must preserve the right to democratic protests, but we must also stop the emergence of Jewish terrorism".
With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s so-called disengagement plan having passed its major parliamentary hurdles, opponents are resorting to increasingly hardline tactics in a bid to wreck the operation.
The security services revealed on Monday that nine people had been arrested on suspicion of planning to attack Islam`s third-holiest site in annexed east Jerusalem.
Sharon himself has been the subject of numerous death threats by opponents of disengagement, evoking memories of the assassination of premier Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a Jewish radical angered by the Oslo autonomy accords.
The prison service revealed Tuesday that a group of women who had been arrested during protests the night before against the pullout had scrawled slogans on their walls of their cells such as "We killed Rabin, well kill you too", and "Sharon, Hitler is proud of you."
"Israeli society cannot tolerate the assassination of another prime minister," Diskin told a closed-door session of parliament`s foreign affairs and defence committee. "This would trigger a strategic shockwave."
In another sign of the radicalisation of the anti-pullout protests, around 300 demonstrators were arrested Monday for blocking dozens of roads across the country in a game of cat-and-mouse with the police during evening rush hour.
Baruch Marzl, one of the ringleaders, said he hoped the government would be persuaded to abandon its plan to leave the occupied Palestinian territory with more direct action.
"The operation yesterday was a huge success, and if we continue with this kind of determination we will be able to paralyse not only the traffic but the whole country and put an end to this whole plot," Marzl told Israeli radio.
Soldiers and police who will take part in the operation to uproot the 8,000 Gaza settlers will be unarmed, hoping that sheer weight of numbers will overwhelm the opposition of the settlers.
The events of Monday night appeared to demonstrate the limitations of manpower alone, especially in the face of well-organised protests.
However, national police chief Moshe Karadi said the police had held back from using its full force on Monday.
"The Israeli police will match its force to the severity of the disruptions that occur in the future," Karadi added.
The United States, meanwhile, confirmed that Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas will meet President George W. Bush at the White House on May 26.
"The president looks forward to discussing with president Abbas a range of bilateral and regional issues including the Gaza disengagement and efforts to move ahead on the `roadmap` toward a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Abbas himself was in China on the latest leg of a swing through Asia which will also take him to Pakistan and India.
Speaking to reporters in Beijing, Abbas said the radical Islamist movement Hamas could even enter government after it contests legislative elections for the first time in July.
"If they would like to participate in political life, and if they win enough seats in the legislative election, they`re welcome to participate, even in the future government," he said
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has called for a rethink of the whole Gaza pullout if Hamas, behind the majority of anti-Israeli attacks during the Palestinian uprising, triumphs in the parliamentary contest.
05/17/2005 15:34 GMT