Israel will encourage Jewish settlers in Gaza to leave their homes in exchange for compensation as early as this summer -- months before a Cabinet vote to approve evacuation of the settlements, according to a government document.
The government timetable, presented on Wednesday to the committee overseeing the pullout, calls for completion of the process by Sept. 30, 2005, or three months ahead of the original target date.
Settlers who refuse to leave by Sept. 1, 2005, will be forced out of their homes by the middle of the month, according to the document.
PHOTO: AP
The document was a sign of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's determination to go ahead with the pullout, despite opposition from hard-liners who this week deprived him of his parliamentary majority and threatened to bring him down.
Also, some Cabinet opponents were won over by his pledge to bring the four stages of settlement evacuation before separate votes, but the timetable means that the votes would be meaningless.
According to the plan, 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank would be evacuated by Sept. 15, 2005, and the army would pull out of Gaza by the end of that month. The process would begin with voluntary exit by settlers, beginning in August this year, in exchange for compensation.
In Washington, Sharon adviser Zalman Shoval said the houses at the settlements would be destroyed, but the public buildings would remain.
He told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a private research group, that many Israelis did not want to see Palestinian flags flying from homes once occupied by Israeli Jews.
The Cabinet approved the withdrawal plan on Sunday, the first time Israel has decided in principle to remove veteran settlements from the West Bank or Gaza.
The timetable for evacuation of the 7,500 Jewish settlers and the military was put together by Israel's National Security Council.
The Sept. 30, 2005 date for completing the full withdrawal is three months ahead of the target date Sharon has mentioned. In a speech on Wednesday, he repeated his goal of ending Israel's presence in Gaza.
"Israel made a decision this week crucial to its future, a decision on the disengagement plan that will be completed by the end of 2005," he said.
Though Cabinet skeptics insisted that their vote in favor of Sharon's "unilateral disengagement" plan did not include approval of actual evacuation of settlements, the document shows that starting in November, compensation would be paid to settlers who leave their homes voluntarily in an exodus that would begin three months earlier.
The timetable mentions a Cabinet vote in February, 2005 approving evacuation of settlements, but the process would be in motion months before then. The timetable was presented at the committee meeting as an approved schedule, but it could face alterations if opposition surfaces.
Israeli officials said Wednesday's meeting reflected the prime minister's determination to push forward with his plan.
"He is as determined as can be," said the senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Following the Cabinet vote, he said, the plan is "irrevocable."
The voluntary settler-evacuation period would continue until July 2005.
Entry into the settlements would be banned after Aug. 14, 2005, to stop thousands of people from going to protest or block the pullout.
Evacuation "by force" of settlers who refuse to leave on their own would begin on Sept. 1, 2005, to be completed by Sept. 15, 2005.
The second section of the timetable calls for negotiating with international organizations about issues like transferring property. The target date is October 2004.
The third section orders the military to begin preparing its withdrawal in July 2004, pulling out of Gaza between Sept. 15 2005 and Sept. 30, 2005, just after the final evacuation of the settlements.
In Gaza violence on Wednesday, a Hamas militant was killed as Israeli troops moved into Palestinian areas, surrounded a house and flattened farmland, Palestinian officials said.
Palestinian militants fired a rocket at an Israeli town from the area on Tuesday.
The military said soldiers returned fire after an anti-tank missile was fired at them.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS