Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid slammed Friday calls for forceful opposition to the evacuation of settlements as ‘incitement to civil war’.
‘It is untenable that there is incitement to civil war in the name of love for the country,’ said Lapid, warning that the legal system would not remain indifferent.
National Union MK Aryeh Eldad responded by reminding the Justice Minister with comments Israeli Prime minister Ariel Sharon made 10 years ago, in which he said that it is permissible for soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate settlements, Army Radio reported
Labor MK Matan Vilnai said that calls to refuse orders to evacuate settlements represent ‘a mortal blow’ to democracy. .
Meanwhile, settler leaders charged Friday that Sharon does not have a mandate to carry out the withdrawal and reiterated that the plan would likely result in a civil war
Eliezer Hasdai, head of a regional settlement council warned that if the evacuation of settlements is not brought to democratic elections, there could be a mass refusal among soldiers and officers or a civil war. .
This week, a right-wing petition signed by 185 IDF officers, former lawmakers, scholars and public figures, calling on police and soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate settlements was published.
Settlers and their right wing supporters are excreting tremendous pressure to remove the settlements’ evacuation element from the disengagement plan, therefore turning disengagement into a process of isolating highly populated Palestinian areas into isolated cantons.
On Wednesday, settler leaders joined the bilateral U.S.-Israeli negotiations and met with the American ambassador to Israel Dani Kirtzer.
In the absence of a Palestinian negotiator and the international community, the future of Palestinians and their territories is being decided based on the interests and strength of the different Israeli groups, where settlers and their supporters present a serious power, which is impossible to ignore.
The dispute is between the ones who advocate for establishing a bold apartheid system for Palestinians and the ones who advocate for one that is possible to sell to the international community.
