Gaza pullout gathers momentum
2004-06-11 17:00
Jerusalem - Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip gathered pace on Friday with a bill on compensating settlers for loss of their homes to be discussed next week.
"Everything must be carried out in an orderly fashion and without panic," Israeli justice minister Yossef Lapid told public radio.
"There will be a law on compensation and settlers have no reason to worry because nobody will be cheated," said Lapid, whose centre-right Shinui party is a strong supporter of the controversial pullout plan.
A bill on compensation payments is to be put to ministers for approval by the end of July, with a view to pushing it through parliament before the August recess, the Haaretz newspaper reported.
A new compensation, evacuation and dialogue committee is to start discussing the bill on Tuesday in a bid to have it ready by an end of July deadline, the paper said.
A new timetable leaked to the press on Thursday proposes that Gaza settlers be able to apply for compensation for leaving their homes from as early as the beginning of August.
Settlers would be able to voluntarily leave the 21 Gaza settlements and four other Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank up until August next year after which the areas would be regarded as closed military zones.
Under the provisional timetable, all the settlers should have cleared out of Gaza and the four West Bank settlements by the end of September 2005.
A source close to Sharon confirmed to AFP that the leaked timetable was "an option" which "may be subject to changes".
"I don't know how authoritative the timetable is but the withdrawal is certainly feasible," Israeli political analyst Mark Heller told AFP.
"A considerable number of settlers will be happy to leave if they get adequate compensation," he said, noting that the anti-withdrawal stance expressed by the settler movement's spokesmen "doesn't reflect a wall-to-wall consensus at all."
- AP