Israel plans to pay an average of $300,000 per family in compensation to settlers who leave the Gaza Strip and will give swift cash advances to those who go voluntarily, government officials said Friday.
The cash advances could be available as early as August under a draft proposal by a government committee working out the details of a Gaza pullout plan that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Cabinet has approved in principle, the officials said.
Payouts before a Cabinet vote planned for March on whether to begin removing settlements could force a showdown between Sharon and hard-liners in his coalition, bringing it closer to collapse, political analysts said.
News Wednesday that the committee was proposing that voluntary evacuations begin in two months set Sharon on a collision course with the powerful settlers lobby, which sees cash advances as an attempt to make settlers to go quietly and quickly.
Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for settlers in Gaza, said most had signed a declaration refusing to leave or to negotiate payouts.
Government officials estimated the average payout per household at $300,000, based on the number of family members and the size of agricultural plots. Such a sum would be enough to buy a one-family house with a garden or a large apartment in many communities in Israel.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Sharon that the international community was ready to offer assistance and resources to ensure the successful implementation of the plan, Sharon’s office said in a statement.
The total government bill — including a troop withdrawal from Gaza and removal of four West Bank settlements also scheduled to go — could come to more than $1.5 billion.
Sharon wants parliament’s approval
Israeli media reports said Sharon hoped to push compensation legislation through parliament by late July.
But it is unclear whether his government can last that long. Sharon lost his parliamentary majority Tuesday when two members of the pro-settler National Religious Party defected.
The party has still to make a final decision on whether to stick by the prime minister. Its departure would likely spur Sharon to seek a partnership with the pro-withdrawal Labor Party or force early elections.
Sharon’s plan envisages the removal of all 21 settlements in Gaza, a sandy coastal strip where 7,500 settlers and 1.3 million Palestinians live, and four of 120 in the West Bank, which is home to 230,000 settlers and 2.4 million Palestinians.
According to a copy of the committee’s blueprint, which was obtained by Reuters, settlers would have until Sept. 1, 2005, to move out before the army removed them by force. Those evicted by soldiers would get less compensation or none at all.
The military would then quit Gaza by Oct. 1, 2005.
Opponents of uprooting the settlements Israel built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war call withdrawal a reward for ”Palestinian terrorism” after more than three years of an uprising against Israeli occupation.
Sharon says removing hard-to-defend settlements would bolster Israeli security and revive the stalled peace “road map.”
Palestinians want a pullout from Gaza to be followed by total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Sharon has said Israel intends to hold on to parts of the West Bank permanently.