Text of Knesset Speaker Rivlin's letter attacking Sharon's plan

[Translated by IMRA]

The following letter was sent to all the members of the Likud central
committee. It is on the Knesset letterhead of Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin

October 2004

Friends,

The holidays have passed.

A new period is upon us, and I, as certainly many of you, are very
concerned.

Despite the hope (or perhaps delusion) that it won't really happen, that he
won't go with it to the end, it appears that the prime minister is
determined to carry out the disengagement plan- despite the schism in the
nation.

This week I received a copy of the "disengagement law" that is being
prepared for us in the Ministry of Justice. I read it and was disgusted.
Scores of technical articles , economic and bureaucratic, whose meaning is
to uproot everything.

No one should delude himself: this is only the beginning.

This disengagement law will, forefend, one day apply (even if not by the
Likud government but instead by the government that will come in its place,
and will rely on the precedent), to the expanses of Judea, the Land of
Benjamin, the entire Shomron, and yes - also Jerusalem.

Those who proclaim themselves "occupier" in the Katif Bloc will not be able
to stop the retreat there.

It is hard to believe, but all this is about to be carried out by the Likud;
by the national movement; by the person who sits on Menachem Begin's seat.

What will we tell the public next time we seek their trust?

What will we explain to them?

Will we tell them, as some of those vying for the leadership of the Likud
and the nation, that we erred the entire way?

That we are "occupiers" in our land?

And if, forefend, this is the case,
we erred and deceived generations of Israelis - how can we face the public?

In the name of what ideology will we seek the trust of our nation again?

Over the years when we elected our leaders in the Likud and our
representatives to the Knesset, we did not strictly check the backgrounds of
the candidates.

We did not check their loyalty to the principles upon which Menachem Begin
built the national camp; their loyalty to the basic ideology of the Herut
movement; their loyalty to the Land of Israel.

The considerations in choosing, as it turned out in many instances, were
completely different.

To this day, none of them have been put to the test, because their loyalty
to the Land of Israel was never really put to the test.

But now, as the first test has arrived; as the fate of the settlement
enterprise is in our hands, in the hands of the national government that
relies on an unprecedented majority in the public, it appears - how
terrible - that we are failing.

We are failing.

Because the representatives of the national camp in the Knesset and its
leaders are saying things that in the past even leftists didn't dare to say;

Because a small group of those loyal to the path - and me among them - are
presented as "rebels", as if we endanger Likud unity.

But what is the Likud without a path?

What is the national camp without loyalty to the Land of Israel?

We must search our souls.

The time has come to take charge.

The time has come to return to the path we were taught; the path of Menachem
Begin.

Yours, With loyalty to the path,

Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin
Chairman of the Knesset