Sanhedrin: Disengagement "is a crime."

From Arutz-7:

The Sanhedrin´s Declaration Concerning the Disengagement
Tuesday, March 8, 2005 / 27 Adar 5765

The reestablished Sanhedrin has concluded extensive deliberations on the disengagement plan, rejecting it as a contradiction to the Torah of Israel.

The current format of the Sanhedrin is the renewal of the historic Sanhedrin, Judaism's highest legal-religious tribunal during Holy Temple times. The 71-man assembly convened in one of the Holy Temple chambers, and existed from several decades before the Common Era until roughly 425 C.E. The renewed body was launched last year in Tiberias, and convenes in Jerusalem.

Following an intensive study and debate on the issue and its halakhic [Jewish legal] implications, the Sanhedrin drafted a declaration Monday, stating inter alia:

* The disengagement plan, involving the uprooting of Jewish communities in Gaza and Samaria and the abandonment of these areas to a foreign entity, is in direct contradiction to the Torah of Israel, and is null and void. Future governments of Israel will have to re-conquer the areas in question.

* The decision to implement the uprooting will cause large numbers of Jews to transgress many of the Torah's commandments.

* The Government of Israel and the Knesset, in their present form and power structure, are institutions that have no authority according to Jewish Law to render decisions that contradict the Torah of Israel.

* No Jew is permitted to cooperate with the program of uprooting, in any way whatsoever.

* Any Jew – including a soldier or policeman – who supports the uprooting, whether directly or indirectly, whether by voting in its favor, or by giving counsel, or by supplying vehicles or materials, and certainly anyone who actively participates in the uprooting, thus transgresses a large number of Torah commandments, such as not standing idly by one's neighbor's blood (Lev. 19,17).

* The uprooting of the residents of the Gaza Strip and Samaria is a crime and an injustice to the residents, and places many other communities – in fact, all citizens of the State of Israel – in mortal danger.

* By this declaration, the Sanhedrin, as the link of continuity of the Torah received by Moses at Sinai, hereby expresses the stance of Israel's Torah... The Sanhedrin, as the representative of the Jewish people throughout history, hereby affirms that the Jewish people -- regardless of this or that government -- does not relinquish, and is not entitled to relinquish, so much as the span of a solitary man's foot of the Land of Israel according to its Biblical boundaries, for it is G-d's land.