Israeli Ministers Back Compensation Plan For Gaza Settlers

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli ministers approved a compensation package for settlers due to be uprooted from their homes as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected calls to submit his Gaza pullout plan to a referendum.

Sharon's security cabinet, comprising his most senior ministers, voted nine to one for the plan, which military radio said would eventually see families receive between 200,000 to 300,000 dollars in compensation.

While sources described 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.

Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the Gaza settlers, vented his fury at the proposals, saying Sharon had no mandate for the pullout.

Sharon said last month he expected his full cabinet to vote on the final version of the plan on October 24 before parliament has its say on November 3.

"This decision is illegal, immoral and criminal," Sternberg told AFP. "This is a hysterical reaction on the part of the prime minister who feels he is about to lose power."

The security cabinet vote is another sign of Sharon's determination to forge ahead with a project which has split his party, alienated his traditional supporters among the settlers and even put his life in danger.

Police revealed Tuesday that they were investigating death threats against Sharon and the head of the disengagement administration, Jonathan Bassi, which had been received in recent days.

Also on Tuesday, a radical rabbi settler opposed to the Gaza pullout plan told Israeli television he was ready to hold a mystical Jewish ceremony called a "Pulsa Denura" to cast a death curse on Sharon.

Rabbi Yusef Dayan held such a ceremony before the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist opposed to the Oslo peace deal Rabin had signed with the Palestinians.

Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the pullout 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 Tuesday that there was 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, renewing a threat to expel him from the West Bank.

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 would 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," he said, referring to the assassination of the co-founder of Hamas and his successor.

"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, would be fiercely opposed by Washington.

However, Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat told AFP that the threats "are very serious and are preparing the ground for a physical attack on president Arafat."

Later Tuesday, Arafat wished Israel well on the occasion of the Jewish New Year, which begins Wednesday night and which has led the Israeli army to lock down the Palestinian territories.

"Men of courage should unite in their efforts to build peace between the two peoples," said the statement, addressed to Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

"Hatred, killings, blockades and the barrier" being built to separate Israel from the West Bank, "cannot contribute to a just peace," he added.

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.

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.

In another incident, a Palestinian was wounded in an exchange of fire with Israeli soldiers in the south of the Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt, Palestinian security sources said.