Israel may resettle Jews to West Bank
JERUSALEM -- Israel may move Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new plan to dismantle Gaza settlements, government officials said yesterday.
"It is one of the options being considered," an official in Sharon's office said. Other Israeli officials have said the government is also considering moving Gaza settlers back into Israel and paying them compensation.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat condemned any relocation of Gaza settlers to the West Bank, demanding the removal of all settlements from the occupied territories.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, back from talks in Washington with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said any Israeli unilateral steps were still months away.
"It [the disengagement plan] will take months; it's not a matter of one day," Olmert told Israel's Channel 1 television. "[President Bush] understands this is not a path [completed] with a push of a button, and then everything works out the next morning."
Sharon's surprise announcement Monday that he planned to give up almost all Gaza settlements appeared to have paid him political dividends, with his poll rating rising this week, as he confronts a bribery scandal that could unseat him.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that in a visit to Washington expected later this month or next, Sharon would seek US approval to expand West Bank settlement blocs that Israel might annex in a future peace deal with the Palestinians.
It said the prime minister -- a longtime champion of settlement building on occupied land -- would justify the request by explaining that West Bank enclaves would have to be expanded to accommodate some of the 7,500 Gaza settlers.
Sharon has proposed dismantling 17 of the 21 Gaza settlements and several of the more than 120 in the West Bank in a unilateral plan to separate from the Palestinians and draw a "security line" should a US-backed peace plan fail.
He has made clear that any go-it-alone Israeli move would leave the Palestinians with less land than they want for a state in the West Bank and Gaza, captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
