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Gaza pullout inspires extremists to violence

In Netzer Hazani, a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, the M16s were piled like firewood. Every man in the community had set his Israeli army-issue rifle and ammunition on a table to send a message: We will not train our guns on our own soldiers.

But the image of nonviolence this settlement of 80 families hoped to send quickly faded when a Jewish extremist AWOL from military service opened fire last week on a busload of Druze citizens whom he presumed to be Arab. After the shooting that killed four, Eden Natan-Zada was beaten to death by a mob. The attack fed what some settlers see as an emerging gap between what they will do to stop disengagement, and what ultranationalist extremists may do to reignite the Arab-Jewish conflict in an effort to halt Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s withdrawal of settlers.

Underscoring how precarious Israel`s political situation is, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - a controversial prime minister in the 1990s - quit Mr. Sharon`s government Sunday, citing opposition to the pullout plan.