Israeli ministers approved a compensation package on Tuesday for settlers due to be uprooted from their homes as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected calls to submit his Gaza pull-out plan to a referendum.
Sharon’s security Cabinet, comprising his most senior ministers, voted nine to one for the plan that military radio said would eventually see families receive between $200 000 and $300 000 in compensation.
While sources described the atmosphere at the meeting as stormy, it represents the first concrete step towards the implementation of the so-called disengagement plan, which should see all 8 000 of the Gaza settlers and residents of four remote Jewish enclaves in the West Bank evacuated next year.
The sole dissenter was Welfare Minister Zevulun Orlev, a member of the far-right National Religious Party, the political mouthpiece of the settler movement.
Sharon said last month that he expects his full Cabinet to vote on a final version of the plan on October 24 before Parliament has its say on November 3.
The vote at the security Cabinet is another sign of Sharon’s determination to forge ahead with a project that has split his party, alienated his traditional supporters among the settlers and even put his life in danger.
Police revealed on Tuesday that they are investigating death threats against Sharon and the head of the disengagement administration, Jonathan Bassi, which have been received in recent days.
Tens of thousands demonstrated against the pull-out on Sunday night while Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged Sharon to submit the plan to a referendum.
However, Sharon said in a series of interviews published on Tuesday that there is simply no time to hold a nationwide poll.
”The disengagement plan will be implemented without delay, according to the dates that were set. Were a referendum not to delay the process at all I might be able to consider it, but that isn’t the situation,” Sharon told the Maariv daily.
The premier then took a swipe at Netanyahu, his chief rival within the main governing Likud party, without mentioning him by name.
”Regretfully, there are people who are trying to torpedo and to delay the implementation of the plan, and who are motivated by foreign interests.”
Sharon also had a go at his arch-enemy Yasser Arafat, insisting that the Palestinian leader’s days in the West Bank are numbered and warning that he will be dealt with in the same way as two assassinated heads of Hamas.
In an interview with the top-selling Yediot Aharonot published a year after the security Cabinet approved in principle of Arafat’s ”removal”, Sharon insisted that the 75-year-old will be banished ”at a time that suits us”.
”We took action against [Sheikh] Ahmed Yassin and [Abdelaziz] Rantissi and a few other murderers when we thought the time was right. On the matter of Arafat’s expulsion we will operate in keeping with that same principle: we’ll do it at a time that suits us,” he told the daily.
Sharon has made a number of previous threats against Arafat’s life but any move to either assassinate or expel the Palestinian leader from his West Bank headquarters, where he has been confined for nearly three years, will be fiercely opposed by Washington.
However, Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erakat said the threats ”are very serious and are preparing the ground for a physical attack on president Arafat”.
In events on the ground, two Israeli soldiers were wounded when a bicycling Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in the north of the West Bank.
The attack, which was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, took place between the town of Qalqilya and the nearby village of Habla, which are linked by a tunnel.
Palestinian security sources said that two Palestinians were also wounded in the attack.
In a phone call to AFP’s offices in the main northern West Bank city of Nablus, an anonymous caller said the attack had been carried out by a member of the Brigades, which is an armed offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah movement. — Sapa-AFP