JERUSALEM, 21 February 2005 — The Israeli Cabinet yesterday overwhelmingly backed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull out from the Gaza Strip, paving the way for a historic withdrawal from Palestinian territory.

Officials said that Sharon’s so-called disengagement plan had been approved by 17 votes to five, enabling him to become the first Israeli prime minister to order a pullout from occupied Palestinian territory. Sharon, who is hoping the Gaza withdrawal will allow Israel to strengthen its grip on parts of the West Bank, also won endorsement for a revised route of the vast separation wall which the Palestinians fear is designed to pre-empt the boundaries of their promised state.

Meanwhile, a group of Palestinians who had been expelled by Israel to the Gaza Strip were given a heroes’ welcome yesterday after returning from their exile to the West Bank.

The 16 Palestinians, along with their wives and children, were addressed by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the Moqataa leadership compound in Ramallah after being escorted by Israeli authorities in two buses from the Erez crossing from Gaza into Israel and then to a checkpoint near the West Bank town.

“This is the beginning of the freedom of all the Palestinians who were transferred to Gaza and outside of Palestine,” Abbas said.

Several hours after the Cabinet vote on disengagement, Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz signed an order for the evacuation of settlers to begin on July 20, the premier’s office said.

Sharon said in a speech that the decision to leave Gaza and four small settlements in the northern West Bank was the hardest of his career.

“I have seen the residents of the Jewish communities grow over the years and stand up to the bombardments and the attacks, I am proud of them and their love of Israel,” he told an American Jewish organization in Jerusalem.

“But there are moments which demand leadership and responsibility for decisions to be made even if they are unpopular.

“As prime minister, I must look at the whole situation and I believe the disengagement plan will reinforce the Jewish character of Israel, improve its economic prospects and our international standing as well as relaunching the process to find a political solution” with the Palestinians, he added.

Under the terms of the plan, all 8,000 Gaza settlers and another 300 from four isolated settlements in the northern West Bank are due to be evacuated by autumn.

The five opponents of the plan were all from Sharon’s own Likud party and included his archrival, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The vote prompted a furious reaction from the settler lobby which used to regard Sharon as their ultimate champion.

“Sharon has carried out a political putsch, having transformed his government from the right to the left, whose only goal is to eradicate the Jewish settlements of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza,” the Yesha settlers’ council said in a statement.

Although the Palestinians welcome in principle any Israeli departure from occupied territory, they remain deeply skeptical about the Gaza plan as Sharon has repeatedly made clear that the limited withdrawal would allow Israel to consolidate its presence in the West Bank.

“What worries us about such a withdrawal is that it is accompanied by enlarging settlements in the West Bank which raises big questions about the validity of this withdrawal on a strategic level,” Palestinian Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib told AFP.

Palestinian suspicions that Israel is seeking to strengthen its hold on the West Bank were confirmed after the Cabinet approved the wall’s new route.

The revised version will still jut into the West Bank, contravening a world court decision last year, but takes into account a more recent ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court by sticking closer to the internationally recognized border, or Green Line.

It will incorporate the major settlement of Maale Adumim near Jerusalem, and the Gush Etzion block in the southern West Bank.

Continued construction of the wall, however, was likely to halt recent moves to kickstart the peace process, Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat warned.

“The continuing construction of the wall will undermine efforts to revive the peace process and will prevent the implementation of the road map” peace plan, Erekat told AFP.

Meanwhile, Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei said yesterday he was determined to present his new Cabinet to MPs today despite warnings from the parliamentary speaker that he could struggle to win approval for fresh line-up. “I will go to the Parliament tomorrow and we will see what happens there,” Qorei told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Qorei’s comments came after meetings with the dominant Fatah movement’s central committee and of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

While members of the two committees publicly insisted they were close to agreement on the line-up, other officials spoke of significant outstanding differences between Qorei and new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

“Our agreement with Israel is to bring all of you back and I think in the next two weeks everyone will be able to come to their homes. We promised our people that you would come back and that has happened.”

— With input from agencies