Following Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's last-minute postponement of Gaza synagogue demolitions, Shas party leaders Eli Yishai and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef met with government members Friday morning in order to solidify opposition to the demolitions.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon late Thursday night agreed to the last-minute delay of the demolition of Gaza synagogues, which was scheduled to begin Friday morning. Instead, Sharon agreed to postpone the demolition until after the government meets on Sunday morning.

Sharon agreed to the delay after Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz asked that the government be allowed to discuss the matter once again at Sunday's cabinet meeting.

Opponents of the demolition took advantage of the delay to consolidate support for leaving the synagogues standing.

Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef spoke with Vice Premier Shimon Peres on Friday afternoon to try to convince him to vote against the destruction of the synagogues remaining in Gaza during Sunday's cabinet meeting.

The rabbi held a similar conversation with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Army Radio reported.

Shas affiliates said that during his conversation with Mofaz, the rabbi burst into tears.

Meanwhile Shas leader Eli Yishai held meetings with other cabinet members. Yishai claimed that he had received assurances from Labor ministers Binyamin Ben-Eliezar and Shalom Simhon that they would oppose the synagogue demolitions in Sunday's vote.

President Moshe Katsav expressed on Friday his wish not to see the synagogues destroyed. He met with members of the central rabbinical committee, who enlisted his help to prevent the destruction, Israel Radio reported.

The rabbis said they had spoken to Palestinian religious leaders in Gaza, who vowed to secure the synagogues.

Rabbi Yehuda Deri, a committee member, said that he and the other rabbis would pass a rabbinical degree calling for prayer to stop the demolitions.

Education Minister Limor Livnat said, however, that the destruction of most of the synagogues was inevitable, but international recognition should be attained to safeguard the four largest places of worship.

Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra also thought some synagogues could be destroyed, but he insisted that the Palestinian Authority should take charge of the remainder. "We should not do to ourselves what we don't want the non-Jews to do to us," Ezra explained.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, urged Israel to demolish the synagogues, saying it would be unfair to put the Palestinians in a situation of "damned if we do, damned if we don't."

"We maintain the highest respect for Judaism. We don't want to be put in a situation that we are demolishing synagogues in front of the world, or some of our people may do something that we don't want them to do," Erekat said.

Interior Minister Ophir Paz-Pines on Friday asked Sharon not to accept Mofaz's request to hold additional discussions over the demolition of the synagogues.

Paz-Pines called upon the prime minister to instruct that the synagogues be demolished with no further talks. Mofaz told Army Radio on Friday morning that if the government decided to destroy the synagogues, it would delay the army's evacuation of Gaza by another full day – until Tuesday.

Mofaz also said that the synagogues "would remain on their hilltops." The defense minister expanded, saying that the Palestinians would be asked to secure the synagogues; even though they refused the request, it would still be preferable that the destruction of synagogues in the Gaza Strip be conducted by Palestinians than by IDF soldiers.

On Thursday, the High Court of Justice rejected in a four-to-three vote the request of petitioners to hold a new hearing on their petition against demolishing the synagogues left behind in the Gaza Strip. The court gave the government the green light to demolish those that could not be dismantled.

With AP