Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is proposing evacuating all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip at the beginning of next year, or eight months earlier than planned, to avoid drawn-out clashes with settlers, his aides said.
Sharon was to present the revised timetable to his rebellious Likud Party yesterday. Many Likud legislators oppose a withdrawal, and a stormy debate was expected.
In Gaza early yesterday, a Palestinian man wearing an explosives belt resembling underpants and hidden under his clothing was stopped at the Erez crossing into Israel. The man had waited in line with thousands of workers making their way into Israel every morning.
Soldiers became suspicious when they spotted on him what looked like an activation device, the army said. Soldiers isolated him from the workers and ordered him to remove the explosives, which he did, the army said.
Also, Palestinians said a 14-year-old boy was shot and killed during an Israeli operation in the Rafah refugee camp on the Gaza-Egypt border. Israeli military sources said soldiers were tearing down an abandoned structure and fired on a suspicious Palestinian approaching them.
Details of the timetable were obtained by reporters. It starts in mid-September with the Cabinet approving legislation to give compensation to settlers leaving their homes.
By the beginning of next year, the military and police will be ready to move in and empty the settlements. The evacuation is to be completed in one sweep shortly afterward. Sharon had initially assured critics of the plan that the withdrawal would take place in several stages, with each step approved separately by the Cabinet.
His change of tactics angered opponents of the withdrawal. Education Minister Limor Livnat from Likud told Sharon during a meeting of senior Cabinet ministers that the new plan would also require Cabinet approval, the Haaretz daily said.
Sharon responded angrily.
"This is false patriotism," Sharon told Livnat, according to Haaretz. "We can evacuate in four stages -- on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday."
Sharon has already lost two Likud battles over his pullout plan -- a nonbinding referendum by party members and a convention vote. At least half of the 40 Likud members of parliament oppose the pullout.
According to Sharon's initial "unilateral disengagement" plan as approved in June, the Gaza settlements and four small enclaves in the West Bank were to be removed by the end of September next year.
At the Likud faction meeting, Sharon plans to present "the detailed, specific timetables and dates of the stages in the decision-making process," said Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin.
Since Sharon first raised the plan in December, settlers have been organizing to resist. Though most of the 8,000 Gaza settlers are expected to accept compensation or alternative housing and leave quietly, a small hard core of settlers would likely dig in and try to fend off security forces.
Removing all 21 settlements at once would be practical, said political analyst Hanan Crystal.
"If they do it in stages, the same thousand settlers will run from one place to the next" to resist, he told reporters. "If they do it all at once, where can they run?"
The one-off evacuation also helps Sharon solve political problems. Faced with a Cabinet rebellion, Sharon rammed the plan through in June, but had to agree to additional votes for each stage of the evacuation.
Sharon refuses to coordinate the pullout with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, charging that it has not stopped militants from attacking against Israelis.
In recent months, rival groups in Gaza have been maneuvering for position to take control after the Israeli exit, and there are warnings that Islamic militants could fill a power vacuum.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS