Security surrounding Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Knesset members will be increased in response to incitement from right-wing rabbis, Israel Radio reported Thursday.
The announcement comes after Minister Gideon Ezra told Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Wednesday that Israel’s Shin Beit domestic security service is warning of potential violence towards the PM by right-wing rabbis, Israeli residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and their followers.
The residents have physically resisted the dismantling of settlements and have made increasingly inciteful comments towards the PM since Sharon’s government accepted the U.S.-backed Road Map for peace. Their claims characterize the dismantling of unlawfully erected outposts as illegal and immoral in a religious context.
Ezra’s comment came in response to an exchange with MK Gila Finkelstein regarding the accuracy of Shin Bet’s allegations.
Also on Wednesday, the Council of Yesha Rabbis announced the initiation of a campaign to build new communities for every one that is torn down, termed the “duplicating operation.”
The call for elevated security follows an attempted assault on Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by a man in a Paris café on Monday as reported in the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient Le Jour.