The government has told Gaza Strip settlers they could move en masse to an environmentally sensitive area in southern Israel, a senior Cabinet minister said yesterday.
Settler representatives who met with government officials Monday night were told the government would build up to four new towns for them if they move to the Nitzanim area on the southern Israeli coast, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said.
"The government clarified what it is willing to promise the settlers who fear -- and possibly with some justification -- that on the day after [the pullout], no one will have an interest in advancing a [resettlement] plan, and therefore we promised to guarantee legislation and fast-track planning,'' Livni told Israel Radio.
The ball is now in the settlers' court, Livni said.
"We just asked to know within a few days whether they are interested in moving ahead on this because if they are, then the government already has to erect trailers immediately," she said.
The government served notice more than a year ago that it would dismantle all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four small communities in the northern West Bank this summer, which are home to 9,000 Israelis. But settlers have refused to make alternative housing and employment plans, seeing that as capitulation to an evacuation program they deplore.
Yitzhak Meron, a lawyer representing settlers, told Israel Army Radio it wasn't clear settlers would accept the Nitzanim project.
"A large number of people aren't able to make a decision right now," Meron said.
Environmentalists have objected to the Nitzanim project, afraid new towns in the area would destroy natural sand dunes.
Livni insisted the plan would not create an environmental hazard.
"No one plans to put the settlers on the dunes," she told Israel Army Radio.
The Nitzanim project was advanced because it gives settlers the opportunity to move as a community, she said.
"If group relocation can make resettlement easier, then it is our obligation to do it," she said, adding that "it is clear" to settlers that the government won't increase the amount of compensation it has promised evacuees.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
RSS