ISRAEL: The head of Israel's internal security warned yesterday that in the light of Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate the Gaza Strip, right-wing activists were becoming more extreme.
The attorney general has scheduled a meeting to discuss the issue of growing incitement from the far-right.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, an Israeli motorist was shot dead by militants, and an armed Palestinian was killed in clashes with Israeli troops.
Mr Avi Dichter, the head of the Shin Bet, told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting that there was a growing threat of violence from extremist Jewish elements.
He said an army officer was attacked recently by Jewish extremists in Jerusalem because he had been involved in dismantling a synagogue at an illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank.
The attorney general, Mr Meni Mazuz, said he had arranged a meeting because of recent statements by right-wing leaders, including rabbinic figures, calling for refusal to participate in the evacuation of settlements. These leaders, he said, should "refrain from unnecessarily radicalising conflicts in this sensitive time".
In recent weeks settler leaders and rabbis have stepped up the rhetoric against Mr Sharon's plan to evacuate all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank.
Last week, a leading rabbi in the Old City of Jerusalem declared that anyone who relinquished parts of the land of Israel - settlers consider the land to be God-given - was subject to din rodef - a religious licence to kill a fellow Jew. Last month, a top aide to former prime minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu said it was legitimate to use violence to resist evacuation of settlements.
In 1995, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down by a Jewish assassin after embarking on the Oslo accords. At the time, leading rabbis debated whether the edict of din rodef should apply to him.
A settler was killed and his wife lightly wounded early yesterday, when they were ambushed as they travelled on a road in the northern West Bank. The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, associated with Mr Yasser Arafat's ruling Fatah party, claimed responsibility.
Troops shot and killed a Palestinian militant yesterday, who fired at them as they were guarding a settlement near the city of Nablus. The dead man was identified as a local leader of the radical Islamic Jihad group.
Palestinian sources also reported that a 19-year-old man was killed by troops in Gaza.