September 15, 2004
Jerusalem
police are stepping up their probe of phoned threats to murder Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon if the Gaza disengagement plan is not called off. On Tuesday night
Rabbi Yossi Dayan, a former member of the outlawed Kach party, declared on
Channel 2 that he would be prepared to carry out a ceremony putting a curse on
Sharon.
The ceremony, called Pulsa Denura, was carried out before Yitzhak
Rabin was assassinated in 1995.
Dayan, a resident of Kiryat Arba, said
that he would be willing to conduct the ceremony if other rabbis instructed him
to do so, and added that when he was asked to perform the ceremony against
Rabin, he did so.
The rabbi said that the security services and the
police had questioned about this. "We are forbidden from talking now. We
cannot pray. We cannot think. We cannot feel," Dayan said. "The head of the
Security Service, [Avi] Dichter says that there are people wishing that Sharon
would die. I am among them. What? Can't I wish?" he said.
Following
Dayan's statements, the Judea and Samaria police are initiating an investigation
against him of incitement to murder.
Ilan Franco, chief of the capital's
police, said priority has been raised of investigations into telephone threats
against Sharon and Yonatan Bassi, who is in charge of implementing the
disengagement plan.
Franco also said that the police were tightening the
security around the offices of the Disengagement Directorate in Jerusalem. He
added that the police are also making preparations for securing the Temple Mount
against extremists as the date for the implementation of the disengagement plan
approaches.
"We intensified the security around the Temple Mount,
security that was already in place. We certainly took into account the fact
that extremist elements on both sides, not necessarily Jews, will seek to carry
out an attack, in an effort to block the diplomatic process," Franco
said.
Police and State Prosecutor officers are also continuing to examine
the statements made and posters carried during the rightist mass rally in
Jerusalem on Sunday for illegal incitement.
"We culled banners during the
rally that we thought should be examined by the Prosecutor's Office. If the
prosecutor sees fit to instruct us to do so, we will initiate an investigation
into the matter," Franco said.