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 A new draft Bill, which will govern the tobacco industry, will grant the minister of health the power to issue regulations on the performance standard that all cigarettes sold in South Africa will have to meet, a top official told MPs on Tuesday.
The Department of Health’s manager of the health promotion unit, Zanele Mthembu, told the multiparty health portfolio committee of the National Assembly that this will require a cigarette to ”self-extinguish after a few minutes if it is not puffed upon”.
This is aimed at limiting the number of fires that could be ignited by burning cigarettes, she indicated.
Mthembu told MPs that in 2002 there were 48 000 fires in South Africa, ”which killed 290 people and caused damage totalling R1,2-billion”.
”Smoking caused 5% or 2 535 of these fires, most of them a result of discarded cigarettes setting fire to rubbish, grass or bush.”
She noted that the Tobacco Products Control Amendment Bill — which is in draft form and was not circulated among committee members — seeks to regulate the tobacco product itself.
”It sets standards for the composition and design of tobacco products and the disclosure of information to consumers.”
Mthembu argued that noxious emissions by cigarettes are not adequately detailed on cigarette boxes.
The Bill also ”seeks to outlaw internet advertising and close other [legislative] loopholes that the industry has exploited to continue promoting tobacco”.
Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s special adviser Advocate Patricia Lambert engaged in a spirited attack on the evils of tobacco. She railed against a tobacco company that threw ”smokers’ parties” for students near the University of Stellenbosch’s campus. Even students who did not smoke before were ”lured” to smoke.
Describing cigarettes as ”deadly” and nothing like baked beans or soap powder, she charged that tobacco companies are also providing bursaries to university students as a disguised form of social responsibility.
She noted that people who use tobacco products ended up either ”sick or dead”.
It is envisaged that regulations arising from the Bill will prohibit the purchase or sale of tobacco by anyone younger than 18. At present, the threshold is 16.
It is envisaged in the Bill that tobacco will be prohibited for sale at specified locations such as hospitals and schools. Mthembu also argued that self-service displays ”which allow customers to handle tobacco products before paying for them, leads to increased stealing, particularly by youth”.
While it is not clear just what the Bill actually states, the officials noted that the legislation will first go to Cabinet before being tabled in Parliament. The health committee can then hold public hearings on the legislation.
Lambert warned MPs that they should expect an avalanche of propaganda coming from the tobacco lobby.
Among the tougher measures envisaged in the legislation is an increase in the fine — from the present R200 — for owners of public places who allow smoking outside of the prescribed smoking areas.
While no figure for an appropriate fine was mentioned, a figure of R200 000 rand has been bandied about by anti-smoking groups. — I-Net Bridge