JERUSALEM, 12 May 2005 — Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday razing homes of Jewish settlers to be evacuated from Gaza was unnecessary and would endanger the lives of soldiers by dragging out the withdrawal. Palestinian officials want Israel to demolish the houses before leaving.
Israel’s government will decide as early as next week whether to destroy the homes or leave them intact. The hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he prefers the second option.
Speaking on Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, Mofaz reaffirmed his opposition to razing the settler homes, a step that could require time-consuming removal of tons of rubble. “After we evacuate the settlers we would have to maintain military forces, security guards and forces to destroy the houses in the middle of enemy territory and there is no assurance that there wouldn’t be terror attacks,” Mofaz said.
“I am not prepared, as the defense minister of the state of Israel, to endanger Israeli soldiers in order to destroy the houses of settlers,” he said on Israel Radio. The pullout, which would be the first removal of settlers from land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War and which Palestinians want for a state, is to begin in mid-August after it was deferred because of a clash with a Jewish holiday. “There will not be another postponement,” Mofaz said in a separate interview, adding that the plan would take four to five weeks to implement.
Some 8,500 Jews are to be uprooted from settlements in Gaza and hundreds from four of 120 settlements in the West Bank under Sharon’s plan to “disengage” from conflict with Palestinians, now generally observing a ceasefire after a 4 1/2 year revolt. But hard-line rightist settlers vow to resist evacuation.
According to a Defense Ministry study, razing the homes of the settlers would extend the pullout process by eight to 10 months and cost around 200 million shekels ($46 million) as the rubble would have to be trucked into Israel. Bulldozing would also have to be conducted carefully to avoid damaging underground aquifers and infrastructure in the settlement area, almost 20 percent of the territory, expected to be turned over to the Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile, Palestinian ministers have approved the dismissal of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Patriarch Irineos I over a controversial land sale, according to a statement published yesterday. Ministers backed the cleric’s sacking at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday.
The Cabinet said it approved of Irineos’ departure, following similar approval from the Jordanian government, to “protect the unity of the Church and the Orthodox community in Palestine.” The decision still needs the formal blessing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is in Brasilia attending the first Arab-South American summit.
