Israeli legislator refuses to retract Olmert death penalty remark

May 27, 2008, 10:10 GMT

Jerusalem - An Israeli legislator who caused outrage in Israel for indicating that Premier Ehud Olmert deserved the death penalty for returning the Golan Heights to Syria, refused to retract his remarks Tuesday and said he had based his comments on the law.

'I do not apologise for my remarks,' Ariyeh Eldad, of the National Religious Party, told Israel Army Radio.

On Monday the legislator had sparked a furore, even within his own hardline National Religious Party, when he said that whoever acted to remove lands from the state's control and from its territories should be sentenced to death.

The comments came in wake of the announcement last week that Israel and Damascus have renewed peace talks, prompting speculation that Olmert has agreed to return the Golan Heights.

Israeli forces captured the Golan, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel, in the 1967 war, and annexed it in 1981. Polls show a majority of Israeli oppose handing the entire territory back to Syria.

Eldad explained his remarks by saying he was quoting the Israel penal code of 1977, which states that it is treasonous to intentionally act to relinquish territory and hand it over to the sovereignty of another nation. The penalty for that is death or life imprisonment, he said.

But legislators were unappeased, and accused Eldad of incitement similar to that voiced in Israel before then-prime Minister Yitzhak Rabion was assassinated in 1995 by an ultra-nationalist Jew opposed to peace moves with the Palestinians.

Lawmaker Ran Cohen, of the liberal Meretz party asked Attorney- General Menahem Mazuz to launch investigate Eldad's remarks.

'These despicable statements are reminiscent of the days before the murder of Rabin and must not be heard,' he said. 'Law enforcement authorities must prevent it, from public figures too.'

National Religious Party leader Zvulun Orlev told Eldad that he had heard his statement with 'shock.'

'Before we have recovered as a society and a nation from the politically motivated murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, comes your call which gives approval for another political murder of a prime minister,' he said.

Opposition Leader Benjamin Netnayahu called Eldad's remarks 'unacceptable' and 'inappropriate.'

Olmert's office would only say that 'the man and his comments are unworthy of a response.'