JERUSALEM, 30 December 2004 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon laid the groundwork yesterday for next year’s Gaza pullout, ordering his top brass to show zero tolerance toward any soldier who refuses to obey orders. In a meeting with the army’s most senior officers, Sharon emphasized that the army “must make no concessions and demonstrate a firm resolve” in the face of growing calls by opponents of the pullout for soldiers to disobey any commands to implement what they regard as “a forcible transfer of Jews.”

“The army is there to carry out the orders it is given,” added Sharon at the meeting, which was also attended by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon. But Sharon also urged the military to show “sensitivity” during the 12-week evacuation of the 8,000 Gaza settlers due to be wrapped up by next September.

Four other small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank are also set to be dismantled under the premier’s so-called disengagement plan. “We must show sensitivity and understand the pain of the settlers who are good citizens of Israel,” he added.

The ultranationalist Rampart movement launched a campaign recently to persuade 10,000 soldiers to sign up to a petition pledging to refuse any orders to implement the pullout. Rabbis representing the settler movement also issued a religious decree in June forbidding the army and police from carrying out the evacuation.

And in another sign of the increasingly bitter divisions over the project, posters appeared yesterday showing Jews being loaded onto cattle cars bound for concentration camps, bearing the headline “Never Again.” The posters, the brainchild of the banned ultranationalist Kach movement, were roundly condemned on all sides.

Sharon had originally intended that the disengagement be implemented on a unilateral basis but has since indicated he is willing to coordinate it with the new Palestinian leadership after next month’s presidential election to succeed the late Yasser Arafat. PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the overwhelming favorite, took his campaign to the northern West Bank yesterday, where he warned that the separation wall being built by Israel across the territory would not bring it security.

Meanwhile, complaining about a lack of a “balanced approach”, Sharon has said Europe will not take part in any political process with the Palestinians, the Israeli Ma’ariv daily reported yesterday. Europe, he told Israeli ambassadors in Jerusalem on Tuesday, “can assist in investment to the Palestinian Authority, building power plants, water distillation plants, highways, roads and residential buildings for refugees.”

“They should not be directly involved in the political process and security aspects,” he said. Sharon said Israel would not accept the presence of international forces in the region and stated that Europe’s tendency to move directly to the second or third stage of the international “road map” peace plan needed to be blocked.

The premier also said he regretted Israel had not managed to convince the world that the Lebanese Hezbollah organization was a terrorist organization. “We have failed in this effort,” he said.