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Bulldozers in Peat Sadeh destroyed about 40 homes per hour. (AP File Photo)
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Disengagement Authority head, Yonatan Bassi (File Photo)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners March 8, 2006 |
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Israel's state comptroller harshly criticized the handling of settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip last summer in a special report released early Wednesday, Israeli media said.
Government officials were guilty of "severe failures ... that negatively affected the evacuees and caused unnecessary suffering," wrote the comptroller, Judge Micha Lindenstrauss, according to the reports.
Israel evacuated 8,500 settlers from 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in northern Samaria during a three-week period beginning in mid-August. Many settlers rejected the government decision and refused to plan for or cooperate with their evacuation, offering mostly passive resistance to troops and police who came to haul them out.
It marked the first time Israel removed veteran settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Poor planning and handling of the evacuees led to a situation in which 40 percent were still in temporary quarters in hotels three months after the pullout, the report said, though the Prime Minister's Office, in charge of the operation, expected the settlers to stay in the hotels only two weeks.
Also, the special administration set up to deal with the settlers "failed to achieve one of the main goals of the project, solving social problems," the comptroller wrote.
The report found that the government rented 840 apartments in Israel for the settlers at a cost of 5 million shekels ($1.1 million), but only 63 families moved into them.
The comptroller also leveled criticism at the leadership of the settlers for refusing to cooperate with the government office handing the evacuation, making it more difficult for the authorities to plan properly.
The report discussed both the activities of the Disengagement Authority headed by Yonatan Bassi and the local authorities' preparation to absorb the evacuees.
The state comptroller said that in spite of the significant uncertainty around the disengagement's implementation and the lack of cooperation on the part of the settlers and their leaders, there was no excuse for the inadequate preparation ahead of the plan by the State's institutions, headed by the Prime Minister's Office, the Finance Ministry and the Disengagement Authority.
"The Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office's foot-dragging shows that the prime minister and finance minister did not instruct the employees as required. Also the senior managers, including the Prime Minister's Office Director-General, the civil service commissioner and the budget director, did not act with the required urgency," Lindenstrauss charged in the report.
The comptroller also noted that by the end of April 2005, three and a half months before the evacuation, the Disengagement Authority employed "a highly limited number of employees" - only 17 workers.
"This undermined the Authority's preparations for absorbing the evacuees immediately after the evacuation and caused difficulties and mishaps in taking care of them," the comptroller said.
As a result, Bassi felt he did not have adequate manpower to carry out the mission, as he wrote in a letter dated May 2005. However, the comptroller charged that although Bassi was aware of the difficulties and expressed himself strongly on the matter, he apparently did not raise the issues forcefully enough before senior officials.
Bassi also criticized the fact that the press received the report before him and that it was presented just three weeks prior to elections.
"It is clear that this report will become a central issue in the upcoming elections. One cannot deny the inconspicuous timing of this report," he said.
AP contributed to this report.
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