ISRAEL: Israeli police are investigating the desecration of the graves of murdered prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his widow. Leftist lawmakers in Israel are blaming the vandalism on ultranationalists opposed to a planned pullout from Gaza.
Authorities said yesterday that vandals had scrawled "murderous dog" in Hebrew on the tomb of Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995 by a far-right Jew incensed by his land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians.
The name of Rabin's wife, Leah, who died of cancer in 2000, was sprayed over on an adjacent headstone.
The defacing of the graves, in the Jewish state's most revered military cemetery at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, stirred new Israeli fears of civil strife ahead of a planned withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip this summer.
Left-wing lawmakers suggested that Jewish ultranationalists opposed to prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians by leaving some occupied land were stepping up their protests and could turn to bloodshed.
"We are not dealing with the perpetrators of the previous crime but with the perpetrators of the next one," Ran Cohen of the leftist Yahad party told the Jerusalem Post, alluding to concerns that Mr Sharon could also be targeted for assassination.
Last week, graffiti referring to Hitler was spray-painted over 12 graves of fallen soldiers at Mount Herzl.
"Neo-Nazi, long live Beilin" was scrawled on the tomb of the cemetery's namesake, Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl. Yossi Beilin is the Yahad party's leader and a champion of land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians.
Polls show most Israelis support Mr Sharon's plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank starting in July.
It would be the first removal of settlements from occupied land that Palestinians want for a state.
But many Israeli rightists oppose giving up an inch of territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
They see the land as a biblical birthright and any withdrawal as a reward for Palestinian militants who have waged an uprising since 2000.
- (Reuters)