Sharon eyes end to Gaza settlements

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his Likud party yesterday that he intends to dismantle nearly all of the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, and that he has already ordered aides to draw up a blueprint for the evacuation of their 7,500 residents, Likud members said.

Sharon said the Gaza settlements were "a security burden" and "a source of continuous friction" with Palestinians, according to Likud members who attended the closed-door meeting. Sharon's center-right government relies on the support of pro-settlement parties, and removing the communities could bring down his coalition and set off mass protests.

Sharon did not offer a timetable for the proposed removal.

However, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying last night that the government aimed to implement the plan in June or July. Justice Minister Tommy Lapid said his office had begun drafting legislation to compensate settlers for their homes and other property.

Sharon's critics -- from settlers to left-wing politicians who see the settlements as impediments to peace -- greeted the announcement with skepticism, suggesting that the Israeli leader was trying to deflect attention from a police investigation that could land him in court on corruption charges. They noted that Sharon, known throughout his career as a champion of the settlers, has failed to evacuate even some tiny settlement outposts -- a demand included in the international "road map" for peace.

Palestinians also reacted cautiously, saying the move would be welcome but insufficient on its own. Other analysts said Sharon was hoping during a visit to Washington later this month to persuade President Bush to sanction Israel's annexation of some West Bank land in return for a Gaza pullout.

But in an interview with an Israeli newspaper, excerpted online hours before the Cabinet meeting, Sharon said he had simply become reconciled to the idea that Gaza would not be part of the Jewish state in the long run.

"I have given an order to plan for the evacuation of 17 settlements in the Gaza Strip," Sharon told the left-leaning paper Haaretz, which planned to publish the full interview today.

"It is my intention to carry out an evacuation -- sorry, a relocation -- of settlements that cause us problems and of places that we will not hold onto anyway in a final settlement, like the Gaza settlements," Haaretz quoted him as saying.

Sharon, who as a Cabinet minister for much of the past 25 years has supported settlement construction in Gaza and the West Bank, said the evacuation plan was in line with the unilateral disengagement program he announced in December. At the time, Sharon said if peace talks with the Palestinians remained stuck, Israel would take steps to separate the two populations, including accelerating construction of a barrier in the West Bank and removing some settlements.

But until yesterday, Sharon had been unwilling to specify which or even how many of approximately 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were slated to go.

Starting with the Jewish settlements in Gaza, where 1.2 million Palestinians live in congestion and squalor, could be expedient for practical and political reasons. Guarding the Gaza settlements, which Palestinians have regularly shelled and ambushed since fighting erupted 40 months ago, has become a drain on the military's budget and manpower. And polls show a large number of Israelis support pulling out of the Strip.

In fresh violence in Gaza yesterday, Israeli officials said four Palestinian militants were killed in fighting with soldiers in the Rafah refugee camp. Another Palestinian militant died near Bethlehem in the West Bank.

According to the Peace Index, a monthly survey conducted by Tel Aviv University, nearly all Israelis are willing to dismantle the Gaza settlements as part of a peace agreement, while about half of those polled support evacuating the settlements unilaterally.

A few Gaza settlers have themselves told reporters they're eager to accept government compensation and move to within Israel proper. But residents of Neve Dekalim, the largest Israeli community in Gaza, said yesterday withdrawing would only embolden Palestinian militants.

"When terrorists will see we're running away from Gaza, it will encourage Arabs all over the world to use terrorism as a weapon and to believe that they can win through terrorism," said Dror Vanunu, who has lived in Neve Dekalim since 1997 with his wife and three children.

Vanunu said Israel has the biblical right to settle Gaza. Most residents of Neve Dekalim are religious Jews. Other Israelis moved to Gaza after being evacuated from settlements in the Sinai Desert, which Israel returned to Egypt after reaching a peace agreement in 1978.

Rivka Goldstein, who lives in Ganei Tal settlement, said she believed settlers would resist, but not violently.

Sharon's first battle would probably be fought in his government, where at least two right-wing parties and several members of his own Likud would try to vote down any withdrawal.

"He's talking about dismantling [settlements] just because of the investigations against him," said Zvi Hendel of the National Religious Party, one of several factions in Sharon's coalition. "We have to make sure he won't lead this government for much longer."

But analysts said Sharon had enough potential backing from the center, including the opposition Labor party, to get a pullout passed in parliament.

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Labor's former leader, said his party would only take Sharon seriously if he begins moving on the evacuation in the coming months.

"Sharon has done nothing but make promises. But if he's serious this time, it's bigger than anything he's said or done so far," Ben-Eliezer said.

Sufian Abu-Zeida, a deputy minister in Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei's Cabinet, said a withdrawal from Gaza would be positive but not enough.

"If he's talking about evacuating settlements, that's a good thing -- but there will be no end to this conflict without an end to the occupation," he said.

It wasn't immediately clear if Sharon was talking about dismantling all the Gaza settlements. Vanunu, the Neve Dekalim resident, said the established settlements numbered 17 but there were also four recently erected outposts. "I believe he was referring to all the communities here," he said.

A spokesman for Sharon, Raanan Gissin, told the Associated Press that the prime minister's plan referred to 17 Gaza settlements, but excluded three settlements that abut Israel at the northern tip of Gaza.

But Likud lawmakers said Sharon appeared to be saying that no Israelis would be left in Gaza after the pullout.

In the interview, Sharon said the task would be complex.

"We are talking of a population of 7,500 people. It's not a simple matter," Sharon told Haaretz. "We are talking of thousands of square kilometers of hothouses, factories, and packing plants."