Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security service, Shin Bet, has expressed concern that Jewish extremists could assassinate an Israeli leader in an attempt to foil the peace process with the Palestinians. There has been a recent increase in violence committed by Jewish settlers in the West Bank in recent weeks. This week, Israel marks the 13th anniversary of the assassination of then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli fanatic. "Just ahead of the anniversary of Rabin's murder, the Shin Bet sees in the group we're talking about on the extreme right a willingness to use firearms in order to halt diplomatic processes and harm political leaders," Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said.
Diskin spoke at the weekly meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, and his statement was released by another meeting participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the session was closed. Opening the meeting, prime minister Ehud Olmert warned of growing lawlessness among West Bank settlers. Groups of settlers clashed repeatedly with Israeli police, soldiers and Palestinians in the past week over the evacuation of an unauthorized outpost which had been set up in the West Bank city of Hebron. Olmert said that , alongside law-abiding settlers, "there is also a significant group of people that has cast off all authority and behave in a way that threatens the correctness of the rule of law, not only in the area they live in, but in the overall atmosphere of the state of Israel, and that is unacceptable and we are not willing to live with it." Olmert said the government would establish a special team entrusted with enforcing the law among settlers.
