'Most Gaza evacuees compensated'

Sela informs PMO that 80% of former settlers maintained communal setting.

By RON LITTMAN
nitzan caravilla 298.88 (photo credit: Associated Press [file])
nitzan caravilla 298.88
(photo credit: Associated Press [file])
Following the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria in August, 2005, most of the evacuated families have received full compensation and over 80 percent of them have managed to maintain their communal settings, Disengagement Authority (Sela) Director Yonathan Basi told the Prime Minister's Office on Wednesday. Basi informed PMO Director Ilan Cohen that in the past seven months approximately 1,200 new housing units have been constructed at 24 sites throughout the country. Moreover, the Authority dealt with over 3,500 claims for compensation. The challenge facing the government at the moment, Sela said, was the need to resettle the evacuated families in permanent housing, while maintaining the communal networks they had in their original settlements. The meeting, convened to review the massive operation that relocated thousands of people and redesigned Israel's borders, also discussed such matters as logistics and advanced planning for the operation by elements such as the defense establishment and legislative bodies. The attendants also deliberated on the need for checks and balances versus the government's need for flexibility of action. They considered courses of action to deal with residents' lack of cooperation and uncertainty. Cohen and Basi instructed the professional elements to continue investigating matters in depth in order to submit the necessary conclusions to the decision-makers. These lessons will be particularly useful if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert implements his convergence plan, aimed at defining Israel's final borders along the West Bank, relocating tens of thousands of settlers in the process. The government's current plans for implementing the convergence, whose timeframe has not yet been clearly defined, includes constructing all of the housing solutions ahead of the settlers' relocation so that the process would only include moving them from their current residence to their new homes.