The ground continues shifting, one side

In the clearest indication to date of how seriously the government of Israel takes the threat from the extreme right wing of its own citizenry, The Independent (UK) reports that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned on Thursday that

the state would use "all our power" against settlers resisting evacuation from Gaza. Mr Sharon offered maximum political support to the army and police as they prepare to cope with possible violence and civil disobedience when 21 Gaza settlements are evacuated under the Prime Minister's Knesset-endorsed disengagement plan.

The statement comes three days after

Jewish settler leaders warned ... that hundreds, and possibly thousands, of soldiers could refuse to carry out orders to evict Gaza Strip settlers, a sign of the difficulties the army could face in carrying out the withdrawal[, AP reported]. ...

At a meeting late Sunday, settler leaders told the army's top brass to prepare for the possibility of mass insubordination during the evacuation, adding that they were powerless to stop it.

I have to say, it takes genuine chutzpah to declare your powerlessness to stop something you have tried so hard to create, especially at the same time you refer to the evacuation plan as "draconian." Still, while it's certainly questionable if there would be what amounts to defection on such a large scale as to, in the implied threat of settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein, "take the state of Israel decades to rehabilitate its society," the reality of severe divisions and possibility of bloodshed can't be ignored.

Last week, government officials overseeing the pullout were prevented from entering four West Bank settlements slated for evacuation when settlers blocked their bus by lying on the road holding infants to their chests.

On Monday, hundreds of Jewish settlers danced, sang and studied in the rain outside Israel's parliament in a sit-in protest against the withdrawal. ...

Some settler rabbis - who have great influence among religious settlers - have called on their followers serving in the army to refuse to carry out any evacuation orders.

And not entirely without effect, as at least one soldier already has been sentenced to jail for encouraging other soldiers to refuse orders to remove trailers from an illegal outpost.

(Sidebar: "Illegal" in this context means settlements not authorized by the Israeli government. Legally, all Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law and various UN resolutions, but Jerusalem does not apply the term to those it has approved.)

According to Friday's Haaretz (Israel), a letter was published in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that was signed by

four battalion commanders and 30 other officers, all residents of West Bank settlements who serve in the Ramallah-area regional defense brigade, [who] declared that they would refuse an order to evacuate settlements.

That prompted Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon to threaten to strip them of their rank and boot them from the military if they did not withdraw their names within 24 hours.

Sharon is walking a fine line, trying to advance his plans without provoking a violent backlash from the radical right. He has brought into his governing coalition not only the opposition Labor Party but the right-wing religious party United Torah Judaism, the latter of which he had to buy off with promises of government funding for its religious and educational institutes. This was to assure him a working majority in the Knesset despite the defections in his own Likud bloc. The fact that the plan is the source of such intense opposition despite an avowed intent to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank and to take the possibility of Palestinian statehood off the table, demonstrates just how extremist right the settler movement, composed to a significant extent of radical fundamentalists, is.

Israel is facing a looming crisis and there is some danger, even if a small one, of it fracturing. The extremist Jewish settlers are a small minority among Israelis, but for that very reason, just like our own Christian right-wingers, they were ignored too long. The numbers are small but they are fanatical and ready to go into battle against their own fellow Israelis in the name of their claim to purer truth, and that gives them strength.

Some years ago, a friend of mine, then with the Jewish Peace Fellowship, would sometimes give a talk titled "Can Israel Survive Itself?" The deliberately-provocative title was to introduce his idea that Israel's policies on the Palestinians and the occupied territories were actually creating a long-term danger to its security. As the current situation grows out of the attempts of successive Israeli government to create "facts on the ground" in the West Bank and Gaza, his prediction seems to be coming true. I very much doubt he's pleased.