"The agreement
called 'the road map' is in complete contradiction to the wisdom of
the Torah," declared a conference called by the Rabbis' Union for
the People and Land of Israel in Jerusalem on Monday. The emergency
meeting of the group, which was established ten years ago in
response to the Oslo Accords, said no Israeli government has the
authority to give away a portion of Israel for the establishment of
a Palestinian state.
Some 500 Orthodox rabbis, described by
the Jerusalem Post as both right-wing and centrist, attended the
conference in order to form a joint response to the "road map" peace
initiative and the government's decision to dismantle unauthorized
outposts in the West Bank. Declarations issued at the conference
said, "No government has the authority to declare the establishment
of an alien state or to abandon parts of the Land of Israel to
aliens," and "The government is prohibited by a clear and absolute
Torah prohibition from evacuating an outpost or a settlement."
"We speak on behalf of the Jewish people -- past, present
and future. It is forbidden to give the land away," Rabbi Shalom
Gold of Jerusalem's Har Nof congregation said.
Well-known
rabbinical leaders attending the conference included former chief
rabbis Mordechai Eliahu and Avraham Shapira, and former Knesset
member Haim Druckman. Shapira declared that handing over territories
is a "particularly grave transgression."
"No one in the
world, from drawers of water and hewers of stone to prime ministers,
has the right to give up one grain of the Land of Israel," Eliahu
declared.
Druckman said that the "road map" resurrected the
mistakes of the Oslo Accords. "Have we been dazzled? Have we been
taken over by blindness? The road map is worse than Oslo, and now
after more than 1,000 dead and thousands of wounded and disabled,
the eyes of the government have ceased to see," Druckman said.
Beit El Yeshiva head Rabbi Zalman Melamed defended the
actions of settlers who had refused to evacuate the Mitzpe Yitzhar
outpost last week. They displayed "martyrdom for the sake of the
Holy Name. For every outpost that is evacuated, five new ones will
arise," Melamed said.
"The terrible act of evacuating
outposts is liable to lead to an all-out plan of uprooting
settlements," the Rabbis' Union said in a resolution. "The
government is under a biblical prohibition against evacuating any
outpost or settlement."
The rabbis warned, however, of
violent resistance against Israeli soldiers under orders to
dismantle outposts. "All forms of violence, whether physical or
oral, should be avoided against our dear brothers - the soldiers -
and against our dear brothers - the settlers," the rabbis declared
in a statement.
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