TEL AVIV, June 10: Jewish settlers could start leaving Gaza in two months under a withdrawal timetable proposed by a government committee , setting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on a collision course with the powerful settler lobby.
The schedule, which envisages completion of a Gaza pullout by Oct 1 next year, inflamed Jewish settlers and their rightist political allies who threatened to step up efforts to bring down Mr Sharon's shaky coalition.
Sources in Sharon's office said he had not yet approved the timeline, drawn up by the National Security Council and adopted by a steering committee overseeing the Gaza withdrawal.
However, the blueprint was in accord with comments by Sharon that there would be no Israelis in Gaza by the end of 2005. "Maybe there will be people who will leave but I know the majority will not agree," Gaza settler spokesman Eran Sternberg told Reuters. He said most of the 7,500 settlers had signed a declaration refusing to leave or negotiate payouts.
Mr Sternberg said the settlers were pinning their hopes on the possibility that Sharon could be forced out of office long before any evacuation began in earnest. Hardliners in Sharon's Likud party bristled at the timeline, calling it an attempt to entice settlers to leave before a cabinet vote on a start of evacuations which could not be before March 2005 under a deal Sharon struck with his opponents.
Under the proposed timetable, Gaza settlers could start to leave voluntarily this August and have until September 1, 2005 to move out before the army evacuated them by force, according to a copy of the document obtained by Reuters.
It gave the military two weeks from September 1, 2005, to September 15, 2005, to forcibly remove any holdouts. According to the timeline, the army would complete its Gaza pullout by October 1, 2005, after the last settler is gone.
COMPENSATION FORFEITURE: Settlers who leave of their free will could receive more state compensation under the proposal than those who must be ejected. Financial advances would be offered to voluntary evacuees from August to October, and the balance later.
Asked about the details of the timeline, a senior Israeli official said: "This is true but there is no decision yet... It is (just) a plan." Political analysts said the tight timetable could fuel a new crisis for Sharon, now heading a minority government after two National Religious Party lawmakers left the coalition in protest at cabinet approval in principle of his Gaza plan on Sunday.
"If the report is correct, and the evacuation is to take place in another two months, the (entire) NRP faction will be out of the coalition within two weeks," said the National Religious Party lawmaker Nissan Slomiansky.
Sharon's "Disengagement Plan" envisages the removal of all 21 settlements in Gaza, a sandy coastal strip where 1.3 million Palestinians live, and four of 120 in the West Bank, home to some 230,000 settlers and 2.4 million Palestinians. Sharon, meanwhile, needs some breathing space to rebuild his power base and fend off attempts to topple him before speeding ahead with "disengagement".
His hand will be strengthened in a power struggle with political foes if Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz decides as expected by mid-June not to indict him on bribery charges.
Newspapers reported in May that Mazuz was likely to drop the bribery case for lack of sufficient evidence, though some reports had cautioned that he was not far enough along to finalise his decision. Sharon has denied wrongdoing. -Reuters
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