JERUSALEM, 8 July 2005 — Israel is seeking US help for financing its planned pullout from the Gaza Strip, the Finance Ministry said yesterday. Top officials from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office and the Finance Ministry will make the request this week to officials in the United States, which backs the plan for removing Jewish settlements from Gaza and some of the West Bank.
“They will present figures of aid required for the Gaza disengagement and developing Israel’s Negev and Galilee (regions),” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
The total cost of the withdrawal, due to start in mid-August, is estimated at about 8 billion shekels ($1.74 billion). Mass daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported yesterday that Israel would request at least $500 million, but a Finance Ministry spokesman said the figure was wrong and called it “speculation”.
Costs include the relocation of settlers from the 21 Gaza settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank as well as compensation for the 9,000 people who will be moved. The government has allocated costs as an addition to the state budget and will spread them over three years to keep the deficit from rising significantly. Israel hopes to resettle residents in the less developed southern Negev and northern Galilee regions, But to do so it needs more funds for infrastructure.
Including the costs of withdrawal, Israel has set a budget deficit target of 3.4 percent of gross domestic product - still above the 3 percent it had promised the United States in order to win $9 billion in local guarantees from 2003.
Meanwile, a Palestinian activist was killed yesterday in a clash with Israeli soldiers in the Nablus region of the north West Bank, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
Khaled Musseimi, 17, was shot in the chest during a clash between Palestinian activists and Israeli troops accompanying Jewish settlers who had gone to pray at a controversial site near Balata refugee camp, the Palestinian sources said.
Musseimi, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades linked to the mainstream Fatah movement, was sought by the Israeli Army. Another activist was wounded in the exchange.
