JERUSALEM - Leaders of the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip warned Tuesday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was creating an irreparable rift in the nation by bulldozing through his “disengagement” plan.

“The ominous smell of civil war is in the air,” said Binyamin Regional Council head Pinchas Wallerstein, decrying the fact the Jewish settlers are now “being vilified by both the Left and the Right.”

Wallerstein and his colleagues from the Yesha Council urged Israeli President Moshe Katsav to pressure Sharon to hold a national referendum on his intention to forcibly transferring the Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria.

They left the meeting saying their words had fallen on deaf ears, according to The Jerusalem Post .

Meanwhile, Interior Ministry statistics showed a more than five percent population growth in Jewish Gaza since last June.

According to a ministry report, some 392 Israeli Jews have moved to the Gaza settlements, despite Sharon’s goal of uproot all 17 of the communities by the end of 2005.

Gaza Strip Regional Council Spokesman Eran Sternberg said the figures proved Sharon would never succeed in actually forcing Gaza’s Jews from their homes.

“The Jewish people vote by their feet and moved here to support us and show Sharon that the transfer plan will never happen,” Sternberg told the Post .

He added that those Jews who had taken up residence in Gaza during the past six months were “real Zionists,” noting that under Sharon’s disengagement law they are not eligible for any compensation should the prime minister succeed in evacuating them.

“All of these people moved here following the cabinet´s approval of the disengagement plan, which means they came here not out of greed but out of ideology, and are real Zionist patriots,” Sternberg stated. (Copyright 2002-2005 Jerusalem Newswire. 01/26/05)