Israeli Cabinet Approves Shalit Deal
Israeli Cabinet Approves Shalit DealFlash 90

Five nationalist groups issued a warning Sunday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the government ministers who voted in favor of the deal for releasing abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. 

The groups warned that the ministers would bear "personal, legal and political responsibility for any act of terror that results directly or indirectly from the release of terrorists and murderers in the 'Shalit Deal.'"

The groups – the Land of Israel HQ, the Our Land of Israel party, the grassroots Binyamin Residents' Council, the HQ for Saving the Nation and the Land and Ne'emnei Eretz – leveled a grave accusation at individual ministers. "Although you knew that in return for short range PR that will give you personal and political gain," they wrote, "you will bring bereavement to hundreds of families with your own hands – you abandoned your duty to the public as a member of the government…"

The groups explained to the ministers that they can be sued for damages and charged criminally in the future for the consequences of their vote: "The lawsuit and charges will be based on the breach of your duty of loyalty to the citizens of Israel, on preferring your personal political interests to the public's security, to knowingly endangering Israelis' lives and for the civil wrong of negligence."

The letter compares the present vote to the vote in Ariel Sharon's government to raze the communities of Gush Katif and northern Samaria, and reminds the ministers that most of the politicians who supported that move have since taken a political fall.

If the ministers do not take action to cancel the Shalit deal, the writers added, they will be admitting, to a large extent, their own personal liability for any damage caused by a future act of terror.