56 MKs: Let evacuees build in Ariel

MKs from many parties implore PM to help Gush Katif evacuees.

By REBECCA ANNA STOIL
Fifty-six MKs from a wide spectrum of parties submitted a letter on Thursday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in which they implored the government to make an exception to the West Bank building moratorium for Gush Katif evacuees.
The Knesset Lobby for the Land of Israel sponsored the initiative, signed by lawmakers from Kadima, Labor and right-wing parties, which called on the country’s leaders to allow a group of people who were evacuated from Netzarim in 2005 to build their permanent homes, as planned, in a neighborhood of Ariel in Samaria.
“Each day of delay of the entrance of Gush Katif evacuees to their permanent homes is an unbearable injustice,” the legislators wrote.
The lobby, which is led by coalition chairman MK Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) and MK Arye Eldad (National Union), enlisted more than half of Kadima’s 28 MKs in support of the community called “Netzer Mata’i.”
In their letter, they emphasized that “despite the travails that they have endured, including almost five years of temporary houses in caravans, they built a wonderful community that today has already made a great contribution to the spiritual life and the welfare challenges of the city of Ariel.”
The MKs said that in numerous hearings, including in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, there had been a consensus that the community should be among the first to be exempted from the 10-month building moratorium.


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