A huge crowd turned out today in Israel to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle settlements in the disputed territories: 100,000 rally for settlements.

More than 100,000 pro-settlement activists turned out Sunday night for a demonstration in Tel Aviv in a frontal assault on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s promises to uproot settlements and unilaterally withdraw from the territories.

The rally, bumped up a day due to a forecast of rain for Monday, signaled the opening salvo in a multi-front campaign that aims to convince Israelis, primarily Sharon, the evacuation of settlements and unilateral withdrawal would be perilous mistakes.

The demonstrators representing a wide swath from the Likud rightward – some of them Sharon’s closest confidants, including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin – gathered under the banner of “Israel will not bend.”

Construction and Housing Minister Effi Eitam (National Religious Party) took the first swipe at Sharon, saying that in a time when Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Osama bin Laden are all being crushed, “just now we hear from you the sounds of weakness? We will not stand by you if you expel Jews, children from their homes.”

Israel has red lines, said Eitam, the highest ranking member of the government present, and “those red lines are the blood of hundreds of women, children, and aged.”

He then dropped a political bombshell, saying that should Sharon choose to “uproot settlements,” the NRP would leave the government.