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An Israeli border police officer stands next to anti-disengagement protestors in Jerusalem's main square (AP)
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| By israelinsider staff and partners May 3, 2005 |
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| Pedestrians walk by protestors against the disengagement in Jerusalem. Their banner in Hebrew reads: ?The transfer will turn us into refugees". (AP) |
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The Israeli government has agreed on a plan to relocate the Gaza Strip "settlers" slated for evacuation under the "disengagement plan" to the Nitzanim dunes, and intends to meet almost all the demands raised by them.
At a meeting last night at the office of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv, Livni told the head of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, attorney Yitzhak Miron, who is representing the settlers, that the government agrees to the establishment of four new communities in the area of Nitzanim (which would allow Gush Katif residents to move as a group and continue to preserve their social fabric following the pullout). This latest twist comes despite government intentions to house the evacuees in 1,000 housing units in new neighborhoods to be constructed in the north of Ashkelon.
A second demand raised by the settlers was to allow them to continue to maintain an independent municipal entity to replace the Gaza Coast Regional Council, which will cease to exist following the pullout. On this issue too, the government folded: The evacuees were promised that they will be granted independent municipal status, subject to a minimum number of residents populating the new communities and the 400 residential units to be added to the Nitzan community.
According to Livni, rare dunes of the area's nature reserve, will not be harmed by the relocation. "No one has any intention to house the settlers on the dunes of the nature reserve," Livni said in an interview with Army Radio this morning. "Part of the plan to be submitted will include the declaration of dunes as a nature reserve with the aim of preserving them. Settlement is aimed to be alongside the reserve."
The government did, however, reject the settlers' demand to reopen the Evacuation Compensation Law and amend its compensation clauses. "The reopening of the Evacuation Compensation Law is not on the agenda as far as we are concerned," the political source had said Monday night.
Low and behold this morning, the High Court began a marathon hearing on 12 petitions against pullout law. An expanded panel of 11 justices were hearing the petitions, in which settlers say that many of their colleagues are not putting in requests for compensation nor have they requested assessments of the value of their homes, because they are waiting for "better proposals," including the actual establishment of a settlement bloc at Nitzanim.
Under the original Gush Nitzanim plan formulated by attorney Avi Drexler, former director of the Israel Lands Administration, every family of settlers is slated to receive either a 500-square-meter plot of land or a plot of some 1.2 dunams, which will go to families that resided on agricultural plots in Gush Katif. The large plots will receive permits for the construction of two houses.
The families are also slated to receive financial compensation for the homes they leave in Gush Katif, but not for their land there.
Under the current plan, the evacuees will not have to pay development costs for the Nitzanim land, and will also receive the "Negev grant" of some $30,000 that the Evacuation Compensation Law affords to settlers that relocate to Ashkelon and southward.
The State Prosecution said Monday that the compensation being offered to the settlers in the Gaza Strip as a result of the disengagement plan is "much higher than is appropriate."
The state said some of the settlers are refusing to cooperate with authorities, and this is holding up solutions. "Clearly no one can be forced to live somewhere, and it is hard to plan if it is unclear whether the target public will be interested in the solution," the state said. In outlining how much compensation the state plans to pay, the prosecution said the sums are more than sufficient.
At the same time, there may be a hold-up due to Knesset debate that may take place if the Cabinet bars the razing of homes.
The Cabinet will today discuss the fate of the homes left behind by evacuated Gaza settlers, but if the Ministers decide to let the structures stand, the disengagement plan may have to return to the Knesset for amendment and re-approval.
The issue has drawn wide attention, as settlers have voiced fears that Palestinian terrorists may one day come to live in homes which once belonged to the families of their Israeli victims.
Officials had once assured settlers that the homes left vacant by the disengagement in Gaza Strip settlenents would be demolished after the settlers left them.
Former Knesset chief legal adviser Zvi Inbar has said that there is a basis for the argument that a decision to leave the homes intact to the Palestinian Authority would represent a departure from the terms of the disengagement as already approved by the Knesset.
MK Uzi Landau, leader of the anti-disengagment forces within the Likud agreed, saying that "If this substantive clause is changed, it must be returned anew to the Knesset.
"You are seeing a Prime Minister who denigrates institutions including the Knesset," he added. "The overall message his office is giving out is, 'This is what I want, therefore this is what will be. And what force can't accomplish, more force will accomplish."
A senior aide to the PM said that the question of returning the plan for Knesset discussion would be discussed by the Cabinet. "Afterward, the prime minister will decide how he will bring this, and before whom he must bring this," said Prime Minister's Office Director-General Ilan Cohen.
The AP contributed to this report.
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