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Shinui leader and Minister Yosef "Tommy" Lapid: he played a key role in getting the budget passed (AP)
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| By Associated Press March 30, 2005 |
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Israel's parliament on Tuesday easily approved the long-overdue 2005 state budget, meaning Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government can no longer be brought down by opponents of a Gaza withdrawal set for this summer.
After Sharon obtained a majority by pledging hundreds of millions of dollars in special spending to three parties to secure their votes, the parliament approved the budget 58-36 with one abstention.
The budget confrontation caps a turbulent political year, and settler leaders say they will now take their battle against the pullout to the streets, threatening mass protests and even civil war.
Failure to pass a budget by Thursday would have forced Sharon to resign, delaying or even torpedoing the plan to remove all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank in the summer.
Opponents of the withdrawal, including many in Sharon's Likud Party, prevented passage of the budget at the end of last year and continued to vote against the government on Tuesday, though it was clear that the budget would be approved.
Security officials fear increasingly desperate settlers will resort to violence to disrupt the pullout, including an attempt to attack a disputed holy site in Jerusalem or assassinate Sharon.
Pinchas Wallerstein, a settler leader, said he and others would try to refrain from violence, but the situation might spin out of control. "We don't intend to compromise in the battle," he told Army Radio.
Lawmaker Effie Eitam, who quit Sharon's government last year over the pullout, said the evacuation is illegitimate. Now that the parliament has repeatedly voted for it, he told APTN, opponents should "come to Gush Katif and be there by hundreds of thousands" to stop it. Israel Radio named Eitam as Ezra's informant.
The government has given the 8,500 Gaza settlers until the last week of July to leave voluntarily, in exchange for compensation payments. After that deadline, thousands of police and soldiers will begin removing settlers by force. So far, 66 settler families have negotiated an agreement with the government. It remains unclear how many more would leave voluntarily before the July deadline, and how many would choose to fight.
In recent weeks, several hundred people have moved to Gaza to bolster opposition, though the military is taking steps to stop that, planning to declare Gaza a closed military area at least 45 days before the forcible evacuation is to begin.
Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said he believed protests against the pullout have already peaked, and settler activists would have trouble organizing large rallies, now that they have lost the political fight.
After the parliament on Tuesday killed a referendum initiative backed by the settlers, a planned 36-hour protest fizzled, and settlers called it off after just a few hours.
Police say settlers plan to block major highway intersections as part of their protest. Several such demonstrations have already taken place, with young protesters burning tires and sitting on highways, causing huge traffic jams around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem during evening rush hours.
The pullout has splintered Sharon's Likud Party and realigned the parliament. Thirteen of Likud's 40 lawmakers hotly oppose the withdrawal plan and voted against the government in the referendum and budget ballots. Sharon's former allies -- hard-line, pro-settlement factions -- deserted him, forcing him to bring his natural rival, the moderate Labor Party, into his government instead.
But the Likud rebellion still left him short of votes for the budget. In weeks of wheeling and dealing, he secured a majority with a classic Israeli political maneuver -- trading money for votes.
First Sharon pledged 290 million shekels (US$64 million, ?50 million) to a small ultra-Orthodox faction for its schools and institutions. Then he obtained the support of Shinui, with 14 seats the largest party in the opposition, with a pledge of 700 million shekels (US$160 million, ?124 million) for its pet projects, especially aid to Israel's ailing universities. Another pledge of 700 million shekels (US$160 million, ?124 million) to a two-member Israeli Arab faction for schools and services in the downtrodden Arab sector won a pledge to abstain.
Other opposition parties complained that the extra allocations came at the expense of Israel's poor, but the total of extra spending was a tiny fraction of the total budget of 264 billion shekels (US$60 billion, ?47 billion).
On the Gaza-Egypt border on Tuesday, soldiers arrested a Palestinian carrying 50 hand guns and two sniper rifles in a smuggling attempt, the military said. Israel has complained that Palestinians continue to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt despite a truce.
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