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| By Israel Insider staff and partners March 2, 2005 |
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"Disengagement Authority" director Yonatan Bassi admitted Wednesday that only 25 families in the Gaza Strip and none in the northern West Bank have signed agreements to leave their homes voluntarily. This represents only about 1% of the total. Another 38 families, he said are "thinking" of signing. And even among that small amount, there appears to be reconsideration of the decision to move and accept what many describe as a poor compensation package.
Bassi's confession came a day after banner headlines in the press that nearly half of the residents had entered into formal negotiations on evacuation with his organizational, the official implementation arm of the government's plan to expel some 9000 residents of the two areas.
Haaretz reported that Bassi claimed that "some 800 of the 1,700 families living in Gush Katif and northern Samaria have already expressed willingness in principle to leave their homes under the disengagement plan and negotiate over financial compensation."
Bassi said that he had been misquoted by the press yesterday and denied that he had said that 800 families agreed to accept compensation and to leave their homes peacefully.
Members of parliament had responded furiously to Bassi's quotes regarding the progress of evacuating settlers, calling them far too optimistic and misleading. MK Zvi Hendel (National Union), a resident of the Gaza settlement bloc, said Bassi had presented a" false" picture of the situation and attributed Bassi's statements to "frustration" that such a small percentage of residents had signed deals.
Speaking at a press conference at the Prime Minister's Office Wednesday, Bassi said that in the last few days a plan has formed to resettle residents of Neveh Dekalim as a group to the Nitzan settlement between Ashdod and Ashkelon, which has 200 available residential units and another 300 empty lots for building. The goal is to move all the Neveh Dekalim residents in the next few weeks, Bassi said.
However, it became clear that this was not an initiative of the residents, nor was there any evidence of interest by them. If the administration finds there is no interest in the initiative on the part of the Neveh Dekalim community, Bassi said, then settlers from other places in Gush Katif would be moved to Nitzan instead. He did not say if anyone at all had expressed interest in the deal.
Bassi added that most northern West Bank settlers are looking for personal resettlement solutions, and only in Homesh is the community searching for a group resettlement plan. He admitted that no one in all of Samaria had signed an agreement with his administration. In Sa-Nur, in fact, the families refuse to consider any possible plans that would require them to leave their settlement, Bassi admitted.
On Tuesday, Bassi told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that in addition to the 900 families which had not "agreed in principle" to negotiate, he believed 600 would begin negotiating in the months. Only 300 families, the "hard core" of settlers opposed to the evacuation, would refuse to leave of their own accord, he said.
The disengagement administration is currently setting up 900 temporary homes for those who will not have permanent housing by the time of the pullout and for those who will have to be forcibly evicted, Bassi said.
900 prison cells have also been set aside for protesters.
Bassi further told the committee that a third party is currently negotiating the "transfer" of 4,000 dunams of hothouses to the Palestinians.
The Defense Ministry will be responsible for transfering the remains of 45 Jews buried in Gush Katif, and will build a large monument in their memory next to Moshav Nativ Ha'asara, which is close to the border with the Gaza Strip, to replace smaller monuments that will be taken down when the Strip is evacuated, Haaretz reported.
The government has not decided as to whether to destroy the homes of the settlers, Bassi noted, although the decision to destroy them was in fact part of the original Cabinet disengagement decision, intended to prevent scenes of Palestinians "dancing on the rooftops" of homes from which Jews have been forcibly evicted.
He tried to hasten agreements by claiming that there was a huge land rush. "If the residents don't hurry," Bassi threatened, "the Nitzanim area [prime real estate along the coast just north of Ashkelon] will be used for other purposes."
The troubles for Bassi began when Knesset members started to pepper him with questions. MK Ehud Yatom (Likud) said that "after we asked questions more deeply into the matter, it turned out that there are only a few dozen families that are willing to leave voluntarily."
Tempers flared at the committee meeting when MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) warned Bassi that he could be tried before a tribunal like former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, on charges of "ethnic cleansing," forcibly expelling civilians of one ethnic group and handing the "cleansed territory" to another ethnic group.
Labor MK Ephraim Sneh rejected the comparison and lauded Bassi as "an Israeli and Jewish public servant who is carrying out the instructions of an elected government and treating the population with sensitivity and wisdom," Haaretz reported.
MK Zvi Hendel of the National Union, a resident of Gush Katif, said that Bassi was presenting a distorted picture: "The residents of Gush Katif will continue to hold on to their homes and will not bow to manipulations, incitement and psychological warfare," he said.
Other settlement leaders dismissed the numbers presented to the committee by Bassi, claiming that far fewer people had approached the "Disengagement Authority." Haaretz quoted residents as saying that "In Gush Katif, people laugh at the data presented by Bassi to the media. This is simply another spin by the eviction administration whose busiest department is the PR department," settlers said, adding that "the residents of Gush Katif will stand together like a fortified wall" against Bassi's moves.
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