Group demands help for Gaza evacuees

Comptroller rejects charges that publication of Sela report was political.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
lindenstrauss 298 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
lindenstrauss 298
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
The Movement for Quality Government demanded Monday that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fully implement the recommendations detailed in the state comptroller's report on the Disengagement Authority (Sela)'s performance during and following Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip. In a letter addressed to Olmert and government office directors, the group demanded that Gaza evacuees immediately receive the basic housing aid they were promised.
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State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss rejected on Monday criticism leveled at him for publishing the Sela report so close to the date of the Knesset election. Lindenstrauss said that his office was addressing the professional aspects of disengagement, and was not concerned with politics, Army Radio reported. "We don't stop our work during elections; we keep working as if there weren't elections," Lindenstrauss stated in the State Comptroller's Committee hearing. "If we hadn't published anything, there are people who would have said that it was because of the elections. Shutting down the comptroller's office for months because of the elections isn't an option." Lindenstrauss also denied that the report was "imbalanced," and agreed with Sela director Yonatan Bassi's statement that every single evacuated settler has a housing solution, but that not everyone wanted those solutions. 'I believe that by this upcoming Pessah, all, or almost all of the evacuees will be out of hotels. But people must understand, the decision to stay in hotels has largely been their decision,' Bassi said last week.