ISRAEL/GAZA: Attempting to physically illustrate what they say is the vital connection between Israel and the Gaza Strip, an estimated 130,000 right-wingers joined hands along a 90 km route from northern Gaza to Jerusalem yesterday evening, and implored their government to abandon its plans for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Strip. David Horovitz reports from Jerusalem.
A small group of more extreme opponents of the withdrawal, Israeli security chiefs are warning, may be planning the bombing of the mosques atop the Temple Mount to try and thwart a Gaza pull-out.
The unprecedented "human chain" protest, initiated on behalf of the 7,500 Jews who live in 21 settlements in the heart of Gaza's 1.3 million Palestinian residents, was a determinedly non-violent challenge to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon.
"This has to be one of the most powerful events in Israeli history, communicating the simple message that the people of Israel don't want to separate from any part of Israel," declared David Hatuel, a Gaza settler whose wife and four daughters were shot dead by Palestinian gunmen on a Gaza road in May.
The government "won't be able to ignore it", asserted Mr Hatuel, speaking at the "end of the chain" - alongside the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, a location selected to try and link Gaza's fate to the Wall and the adjacent Temple Mount, Judaism's most holy site.
But Mr Sharon appears determined to ignore the protests in what was until recently his natural right-wing constituency, pledging to evacuate all soldiers and settlers from Gaza by the end of next year. And Israeli security chiefs are now warning with ever-greater urgency that right-wing extremists may resort to bombings and shootings to stop him.
In a television interview on Saturday, the Minister of Internal Security, Mr Tsachi Hanegbi, warned that Jewish extremists might try to blow up the mosques atop the Temple Mount, "in the hope that a chain reaction would bring about the destruction of the peace process".
Intelligence officials have suggested possible scenarios ranging from the smuggling of explosives into the mount, to a suicide mission in a light aircraft, to destroy the mosques, and have warned that such an action could ignite all-out war with the Muslim world.
The Waqf Muslim trust, which administers the Muslim holy sites, is tightening security at the compound.
Security chiefs have also stepped up security around Mr Sharon and other leading figures.
Personal dangers aside, Mr Sharon is coming under increasing political pressure to change course. Several Knesset members from his own Likud party attended a meeting with hundreds of Likud activists outside Tel Aviv last night to protest at the prime minister's overtures to the moderate opposition Labour Party, which he may want to bring into government to stabilize his coalition.
Amid the various protests, there was more violence in the Strip itself. Israeli helicopters fired two missiles at a target in the Zeitoun neighbourhood.
The strike came shortly after Israeli soldiers shot and killed six militants in a raid in the West Bank and hours after six Israeli boys were injured, one of them badly, by Palestinian rocket fire at the Neve Dekalim settlement last night. On Saturday night, a 16-year-old Palestinian was killed by gunfire in the town of Beit Hanoun, as he stood by the window of his home.