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A Jewish settler carries his child on his shoulders at the Palm Beach Hotel, the "Fortress by the Sea" in Gush Katif. (AP)
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06/03
Haaretz |
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners June 3, 2005 |
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According to a recent poll conducted by Israeli newspaper Maariv, support for the planned pullout from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements sank nine percentage points over the past two weeks, to an all-time low of 50 percent.
In the meantime, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz announced that he intends to hand over security control of three West Bank towns to the Palestinians before a planned summer withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
In a February truce agreement with the Palestinians, Israel pledged to transfer control of five towns, Jericho, Tulkarem, Qalqiliya, Bethlehem and Ramallah. It has so far handed over only the first two, saying that Palestinian security forces have not done enough to stop terrorist attacks against Israelis.
In related news, about half the farmers in Gush Katif have reached tentative agreements with the government's Disengagement Administration (Sela) to receive alternative agricultural lands inside Israel in place of the lands they will lose when the Gaza Strip is evacuated.
Of the 166 active farmers in the Gaza settlements, Sela has reached tentative agreements with one group of 60, who will receive 1,600 dunams of land from Kibbutz Zikim, and another group of 20, who will receive 500 dunams near Moshav Mavki'im.
But Sela officials said they feared the agreements could still be torpedoed at the last minute, particularly by legal problems. Two weeks ago, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz vetoed two of the three alternatives originally proposed by the government for compensating evacuated farmers, thereby scuppering the negotiations then in the works.
"The state is in advanced negotiations with groups of farmers, but there is still no deal," a Sela official cautioned.
Sela is also currently negotiating with a third group, comprised mainly of organic farmers, for which it has located a 700-dunam tract. Also Thursday, the administration published a list of agricultural plots in the Negev and Galilee that are potentially available to evacuated farmers.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced on Wednesday that only those settlers who have already signed up for a plan to move en masse from Gush Katif to Nitzanim will be able to live in caravans in nearby Nitzan while their permanent houses are being built, because the government has to start building the caravan neighborhood immediately. Some 450 families have thus far signed up for the plan, and the government has therefore ordered 320 caravans, with an option for 120 more.
Settlers will still be able to join the Nitzanim scheme, Sharon told the ministerial committee on disengagement on Wednesday, but they will have to seek temporary housing elsewhere -- for instance, a rental apartment in Ashkelon.
Ilan Cohen, director general of the Prime Minister's Office, told the committee that the government housing company Amigur plans to publish an updated inventory of available state-owned rental apartments throughout the country in the coming days.
Gush Katif residents had asked the High Court of Justice to overturn the Nitzanim deadline --first enunciated two weeks ago by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni -- during hearings on a broader petition against the evacuation-compensation law.
On Thursday, an 11-justice panel said this issue was outside the original petition's purview, and a separate petition would have to be filed.
The AP contributed to this report.
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