In Israel, an Old Twist on Resisting to the Death

JERUSALEM, July 28 -- Prayers had failed. Plan B called for a curse.

So a week ago, 20 men gathered in darkness around a grave in northern Israel to carry out the cabalist ritual pulsa denura , which in Aramaic means "lash of fire." The object of the curse was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who refuses to cancel his plan to evacuate 25 Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory.

According to participants, Sharon will be struck down by the Angels of Destruction in less than a month, or else the 20 men themselves will die.

The ritual might have drawn little attention at a quieter moment in a country that has long been a showcase for extreme beliefs. But as the evacuations approach, Israeli society is transfixed by every detail of what Sharon calls disengagement, and images of the chanting men have been played repeatedly on Israeli television.

Sober assessments also appeared in Israeli newspapers Wednesday noting that a pulsa denura was invoked nearly a decade ago against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin not long before he was killed by a Jewish extremist opposed to his support of the 1993 Oslo accords.

The Justice Ministry is investigating the new curse, although the participants are hardly hiding. "We believe in God," Michael Ben-Horin, a settler in the Golan Heights who helped organize the rite, said in a telephone interview. "I put myself in judgment before God. Either Sharon will die or I will."

Many Israelis have been avidly following the anti-disengagement marches, sit-ins and low-grade sabotage for months, but the protests are growing more extreme as the evacuation approaches.

A new generation of political activists has established its credentials this summer. Scores of teenagers will begin school this fall with criminal records after taking part in some of the sabotage that has been a hallmark of the anti-disengagement movement.

Members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, have been fitted for body armor on orders from Israeli security agencies, fearful of assassination attempts by Jewish extremists. Meanwhile, settlers in the Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai announced Thursday that they would dress for the evacuation in clothes modeled on uniforms worn by Jewish prisoners at Nazi death camps.

Orange, the color of the T-shirts, rubber bracelets and car-antenna ribbons of the anti-disengagement movement, is in or out depending on one's political perspective. Israel's retailers, meanwhile, moved up their end-of-summer sales by weeks. Store owners were afraid a massive call-up of army reservists in August and possible unrest would cut revenue.

"It's like a panic," said Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, a professor of Jewish history at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva.

Raz-Krakotzkin favors further settlement evacuations after the ones scheduled to begin Aug. 15, but he believes the cabalist ritual and other extreme forms of resistance will ultimately benefit Sharon, even though he is the target. The harder this evacuation appears to Israelis and the rest of the world, his argument goes, the less pressure Sharon will feel to press forward with withdrawals from additional settlements.