Opposition leader Shimon Peres said on Tuesday he feared Israeli extremists might try to assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the target of growing far-right fury over a planned withdrawal from Gaza next year. Peres, head of the center-left Labor party, said the divisive atmosphere recalled the climate when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed in 1995 by an ultra-nationalist Jew opposed to his peace deals with the Palestinians. "I am very fearful of the incitement, of the harsh things that are being said," Peres, Israel's leading dove and a key supporter of Sharon's pullout plan, told the daily Maariv. "I fear that someone will try to assassinate the prime minister," he was quoted as saying. Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said he was confident Israel's Shin Bet state security service, which provides bodyguards for Israeli leaders, had learned the lessons of the Rabin assassination. "I think it's much harder to get to the prime minister than it used to be, and therefore I am less concerned than I used to be," said Ezra, a former deputy chief of the Shin Bet. --More 2341 Local Time 2041 GMT
