Rabbis tell troops to disobey orders

JERUSALEM — Some 60 leading rabbis have issued an unprecedented call for Israeli soldiers to defy any orders to evacuate Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Also, Israel’s security service tightened protection for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon amid fears of an assassination attempt by Jewish settlers reminiscent of the 1995 attack that killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The added security was on display as Mr. Sharon made a dramatic entrance into Israel’s parliament yesterday, surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards.

Security officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Israel’s secret service, the Shin Bet, is on high alert for possible attacks on Mr. Sharon. They confirmed that security has been bolstered around the prime minister, lawmakers and parliament.

The rabbis’ call for defiance by soldiers and the increased security reflected the explosive political climate in the tense countdown to next week’s vote in the Israeli parliament on whether to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza and four West Bank settlements.

The evacuation plan has put Mr. Sharon, the one-time champion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, at odds with his former allies.

The prospect of the parliamentary vote prompted 60 rabbis, many of them heads of religious academies, or yeshivas, to declare this week that soldiers have a higher duty to preserve Jewish control of the Holy Land than to obey “immoral” orders from the army.

Israeli officials lashed back, with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz calling the rabbis’ appeal “a terrible danger” to the Jewish state.

“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is what unites the different parts of this nation. This is the source of our strength. Refusal to execute an order will rend the nation,” Mr. Mofaz said in an appeal to rabbis to recant.

Two hundred yeshiva graduates serving in the reserves signed a petition this week saying they will carry out the army’s instructions, whatever they may be.

Others, however, say they will follow the directives of their rabbis.

At the Birkat Moshe Yeshiva in Ma’aleh Adumim outside Jerusalem, almost all of the students interviewed this week said they accepted the urging of the yeshiva head, Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, to refuse to evacuate settlements.

Yair Itzkowitz, 19, who is to begin his army service in March, said he would ask his commander to excuse him on ideological grounds from any assignment connected with evacuating settlements.

“If the commander is stubborn and refuses, it seems to me that I would prefer to sit in jail,” Mr. Itzkowitz said. “In any case, I would call Rabbi Rabinowitz directly to ask how to act. There is no doubt that if he tells me to refuse, I will do as he says.”

Soldiers who were raised in settlements, many of whom serve in elite combat units, are particularly vexed at the prospect of evacuating settlements. Army officials have indicated that such soldiers will not be asked to evacuate their own settlements.