160 Gaza families ready to move

2005-07-25 21:38

Tel Aviv - About 160-settler families from the Gaza Strip are slated to move to a new location outside the Strip from August 1, roughly two weeks before Israel's withdrawal gets underway.

Defence ministry official Rafi Basman said about 320 housing units were ready at the Nitzan site, southeast of the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of Gaza settlers had in recent months signed agreements to evacuate their homes voluntarily and Israel had increased its construction in the south of the country to be able to house those settlers who had expressed their desire to move together with others from their communities.

Housing ministry director-general Shmuel Abuav said they had prepared 1 500 temporary housing options and more than 2 000 permanent housing solutions for the settlers, all located in the Negev desert in Israel.

'Many people need help'

Yonatan Bassi, whose disengagement authority was overseeing the evacuation of the settlers, said on Monday that the authority's office in Ashkelon, the nearest Israeli city to the Strip, was full of people seeking help, a major turnaround from a few weeks ago.

He said: "We are still working to convince families that this is the situation. They need to accept it and choose where they want to go in the future."

The withdrawal, during which Israel would evacuate all its 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, as well as four isolated ones in the northern West Bank, was slated to get underway on August 17.

Northernmost settlements evacuated first

Security chiefs had told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the entire operation should last no more than four weeks and would involve about 50 000 soldiers.

Major-general Dan Harel, the head of the army's southern command, which included the Strip, told the foreign affairs and defence committee that the northernmost Gaza settlement would be the first to be evacuated, with following evacuations progressing southwards.

Echoing comments made by Sharon and other Israeli leaders warned that the evacuations would halt temporarily should the evacuating forces and settlers come under Palestinian fire.

He said operations would be interrupted for 24-hour stretches to respond to attacks, adding that if there were attacks during the pullout, the army would launch a ground operation and if that proved insufficient, the air force would also be involved.

- SAPA