Israel extremists mobilise against Mideast talks

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel's powerful settler lobby and extreme right-wing are sharpening their knives for a political fight against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signing over land for peace with the Palestinians.

"The settlers and extreme-right groups are nervous as the international meeting in the United States nears and their grumbles will grow if invitations are made for negotiations on a Palestinian state," said analyst Akiva Eldar.

Around 2,000 extreme-right Israelis, many of them Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, on Sunday staged the first significant protest against Israeli-Palestinian negotiations ahead of a US-sponsored peace conference.

Called by the main settler organisation Yesha, demonstrators heckled behind a police cordon across from the Jerusalem hotel where Olmert said he may be able to conclude a peace deal with the Palestinians by the end of next year.

Right-wing activists have also tacked up posters of Israeli President Shimon Peres in the black-and-white keffiyeh headdress favoured by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Similar posters depicting former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were run off in a campaign of right-wing incitement that preceded his assassination in 1995.

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Ultra-Orthodox MP Meir Porush, who was at Sunday's demonstration, said Olmert was throwing into doubt Israel's claim to the whole of Jerusalem. "Enough is enough, the fate of Jerusalem is at stake," he said.

A fringe group of ultra-nationalist rabbis has also petitioned US President George W. Bush to cancel the meeting, warning against "terrible danger" and describing the forest fires in California as a final warning from God.

Extreme right-wingers have launched a campaign to release Yigal Amir, the extremist Jewish assassin who killed Rabin, sparking outrage in Israel, where up to 150,000 people gathered late Saturday to commemorate the killing...[Open in new window]