 |
 |
 |
|
|
Sharon and Peres with the Cabinet secretary. (AP)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By Associated Press March 13, 2005 |
|
| |
Israel's Cabinet on Sunday adopted a report on the state's complicity in setting up 105 illegal in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) settlement outposts and decided to dismantle 24 of them, Israeli Radio reported.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Cabinet ministers he was committed to removing outposts as part of an internationally backed peace plan. However, it remained unclear how many outposts would be removed, and how soon. The United States and the Palestinians have demanded the outposts, seen as seeds of larger settlements, be dismantled immediately.
The Cabinet set up a ministerial committee that is to make sure the report's recommendations, including new legislation, are implemented, Israeli media said.
Settlers established the outposts -- usually starting with a few mobile homes, a generator and a water tank -- usually with government backing, and championed by no one more strongly than Ariel Sharon.
Under the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, Israel promised to remove outposts established after Sharon came to power in March 2001. According to the official report on the outposts, 24 were established after that date, while 71 were built before 2001. In 10 cases, it is not clear when they were set up.
Israel Radio said the Cabinet decided to dismantle only the outposts set up after March 2001, but the report could not immediately be confirmed independently.
U.S. officials say they expect Israel to eventually remove all the outposts, seen as seeds of new settlements. Successive Israeli governments have promised not to establish new settlements on lands claimed by the Palestinians for a future state, and outposts were seen as a way around that promise.
At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Sharon said that "the dismantling of the unauthorized outposts is part of the Israeli commitment within the road map."
Sharon had commissioned the study, conducted over six months by a former state prosecutor, Talia Sasson. His critics have said the study was largely a ploy to divert U.S. pressure over the outposts, at least temporarily. For most of his political career, Sharon was the main force in expanding Jewish settlements. In 1998, as foreign minister, he exhorted settlers to seize hilltops and build more outposts.
Sasson described systematic deception by several government ministries and authorites in funneling millions of dollars to the outposts. However, the report stopped short of blaming Sharon or other leading politicians, who settlers say gave them support and money for outposts in the past decade.
Her recommendations included new legislation that would allow the government to seize mobile homes in outposts and making illegal construction in the West Bank a criminal offense.
Cabinet ministers were at odds Sunday over how soon outposts should be dismantled.
Communications Minister Dalia Yitzik from the moderate Labor Party said setting a ministerial committee amounted to stalling. "These outposts are blatantly illegal," she told Israel Radio. "Israel has to evacuate them ... for its own good, not for the Americans."
However, ministers from Sharon's hardline Likud Party said Israel should take its time. Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said Israeli soldiers would be busy with the planned dismantling of all Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank this summer, and that the removal of outposts should wait.
Education Minister Limor Livnat, also from Likud, said Israel is only required to dismantle the outposts established after March 2001, and should not volunteer to remove the others. "Israel, in the framework of the road map, promised to dismantle 24 outposts which were built after March 2001," Livnat told Israel Army Radio. "Israel does not need to be more American than the Americans."
However, Sasson told Cabinet ministers Sunday that there was no difference between outposts before and after March 2001, Israeli radios reported. In her report, she said all outposts were patently illegal.
Today, about 235,000 Israeli settlers live in some 150 veteran settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. About 2,000 live in the outposts, according to the Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now.
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
