Israel's Gaza withdrawal poised to win cabinet approval
AFP
Date: 02-19-05
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, which Israel has occupied for nearly 40 years, moves into a decisive phase Sunday with its expected adoption by the government.
Cabinet ministers are due to vote on the evacuation of over 8,000 Jewish settlers living in 21 settlements in Gaza and another four isolated enclaves in the northern West Bank.
Commentators predicted that Sharon would see his plan pushed through without any major hurdles, thanks to the backing of MPs from the centre-left Labour party, which joined his ruling coalition last month.
Sunday's vote comes just four days after the parliament adopted a law which will grant compensation pay-outs to the evacuees.
Seventeen ministers are likely to back the withdrawal, including Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, while five are expected to oppose it, all of them from Sharon's right-wing Likud party, including Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Despite intense efforts to scupper the controversial plan at every stage, the settler lobby and other extreme right-wing elements, along with a dozen or so Likud hardliners, are likely to face yet another defeat.
Once the plan is approved, Sharon and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz will have the power to sign orders for the physical evacuation of the settlements -- expected to take place as soon as five months after the orders are signed.
From around July 20, settlements in northern Gaza are likely to be the first to go, in an operation expected to take some seven weeks, Israel's private Channel 2 television has reported.
The cabinet is also set to endorse a change to the route of Israel's vast separation barrier being built in the West Bank.
Under the revised mapping, the barrier will take in around seven percent of Palestinian territory, not including occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, as opposed to the 16 percent envisaged in the original plan.
But the new route still makes good on Sharon's vow to consolidate the Jewish presence in the West Bank, taking in the Maaleh Adumim settlement some 10 kilometres (six miles) east of Jerusalem and home to some 25,000 people.
The barrier will also incorporate the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the southern West Bank. Both inclusions are aimed at appeasing settlers, most of whom are staunchly opposed to the Gaza pullout.
In an interview published Saturday in Egypt's state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper, Sharon denied that the barrier will mark the definitive border of an eventual Palestinian state.
"The real border will be established once total calm is restored, which will allow us to move toward the (Middle East peace) roadmap," he said.
Israel has vowed to complete the 650-kilometre (400-mile) "anti-terrorism fence" by the end of the year, arguing that its sole purpose is to protect its citizens from would-be Palestinian attackers.
Known to the Palestinians as the "apartheid wall", the construction often cuts deep into West Bank territory and has been castigated as little more than a land grab and a crude attempt to preempt the borders of their future state.
Last July, the world court classified the barrier as illegal, but Israel has ignored the ruling and continued work on the project.
On the ground, Israeli police arrested five Jewish settlers in the southern West Bank for attacking Israeli soldiers and damaging their jeep, police said.
Around 1,200 Israeli soldiers are deployed in Hebron to guard the estimated 600 extremist settlers living among 120,000 Palestinians.
In an east Jerusalem hospital, a Palestinian teenager wounded last November during clashes with the Israeli army, died of his wounds, medics said.
His death raised to 4,735 the number of people killed since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, including 3,680 Palestinians and 981 Israelis.
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