Shas

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- On the eve of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party wished for the demise of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this world," Rabbi Ovadia Yosef reportedly said during his weekly Saturday night sermon at a Jerusalem synagogue. "God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians."

Yosef also called the Palestinians "evil, bitter enemies of Israel."