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Israeli Cabinet backs plan for disengagement

PHOTO: REUTERS

The Israeli government decided in principle for the first time to remove long-established settlements from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's badly split Cabinet added provisions that cast doubt on the plan's implementation.

Sharon declared victory for his "unilateral disengagement" plan after Sunday's Cabinet vote, but opponents of settlement removal within his own Likud party were comfortable enough with the limits they imposed to go along with it -- and Palestinians were skeptical.

"Disengagement has begun," Sharon told a crowd of young Jews visiting Israel on a "birthright Israel" program just after the Cabinet vote. "The government decided today that by the end of 2005, Israel will leave Gaza and four settlements in the West Bank."

However, Cabinet opponents noted that no settlements could be removed unless approved by the Cabinet in another vote, probably no earlier than next March.

That would give settlers and their backers plenty of time to mount another campaign to scuttle the plan -- similar to the one they conducted among Likud members that led to the defeat of Sharon's disengagement proposal in a nonbinding party referendum on May 2.

"Disengagement has begun."

Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister

The Cabinet defied the referendum results and its own ideology in its Sunday decision. Since the first Israeli settlements were established in 1968, a year after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, no Israeli government had ordered the removal of authorized settlements there before, though some illegal outposts have been taken down.

Egypt is preparing to play a central role in a Gaza realignment. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was to travel to Cairo yesterday for talks about implementing the pullout plan. Egypt has offered to train Palestinian security forces and help them take control of Gaza once Israel leaves. Gaza is a stronghold of the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Shalom himself was one of the skeptics who was won over at the last minute by compromise wording that threw shadows over the possibility of implementing the plan. In the end, the proposal passed by a deceptively comfortable 14-7 margin.

The decision appeared to offer something for everyone. For Sharon and his backers, it stated, "Israel will leave the Gaza Strip, including the settlements there, and will redeploy outside the Strip."

Opponents pointed to a contradictory clause: "The Cabinet approves the amended disengagement plan, although this decision does not mean leaving settlements."

Sharon's proposal has already fractured the ruling four-party coalition and threatened its parliamentary majority, raising the prospect of a snap election even before the March vote on removing settlements.

To ensure a majority for the plan in his divided Cabinet, Sharon dismissed the two ministers from the far-right National Union Party. Another pro-settlement faction, the National Religious Party (NRP), was close to resigning.

"No word laundry can bleach one of the blackest decisions ever taken by an Israeli government, which means expulsion of thousands of residents and the creation of a Hamas terror state," said Housing Minister Effie Eitam, head of the NRP.
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