JERUSALEM, 18 May 2005 — Israel’s new domestic intelligence supremo said yesterday 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 that “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 hard-line 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.
“Israeli society cannot tolerate the assassination of another prime minister,” Diskin told a closed-door session of Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee. “This would trigger a strategic shockwave.”
