The first stage of this evacuation from the 21 settlements there has been set for July 20. The plan also calls for withdrawing some 500 settlers and soldiers from four small settlements in the northernmost areas of the West Bank.

The cabinet decision came a week after the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, approved the withdrawal proposal. The law calls for the evacuation process, which is planned to occur in four stages, to be completed by the end of the year. However, “before each stage begins, the cabinet must decide whether to approve it, based on existing circumstances,” the Washington Post reported.

This pullout is “a very, very difficult move,” commented Sharon, “but it is vital for the future of the State of Israel.”

The move by Tel Aviv is aimed at securing the long-term viability of the Israeli state and strengthening its grip over the largest settlements on the West Bank.

In another vote, the Israeli cabinet approved by a 20-to-1 margin a decision to modify the route of the wall being constructed through the West Bank. The original route of this 400-mile, steel-and-concrete barrier, one-third of which has already been constructed, would have annexed to Israel one-sixth of the West Bank. The revised route, according to Israeli officials, reduces this to 7 percent of West Bank land annexed by Israel.

However, this land includes most of the 230,000 settlers currently residing in the West Bank, where 2.2 million Palestinians reside. The largest settlement, Maleh Adumim, just east of Jerusalem, and a massive group of settlements south of Jerusalem called Gush Etzion would be on the Israeli side.

The wall will also firm up Israeli control over the areas inhabited by more than 200,000 Israelis who live in east Jerusalem, which Tel Aviv annexed after the 1967 war. Last year the Israeli government invoked the Absentee Property Law to claim thousands of acres of land in Jerusalem whose owners are now prevented from farming by the construction of the “security fence.”

In mid-February, Israel’s parliament also approved a $1 billion financial package to compensate settlers being evacuated from Gaza. Some, depending on the size of the land they’ve been occupying and the length of their stay in the settlements, will be given hundreds of thousands of dollars to move.

“Why should these people be paid to leave when they have come to land that does not belong to them, occupied land?” commented Nasser Abu Diak to a New York Times reporter. “They are considered as refugees while the original refugees are forgotten.” Diak is a 37-year-old Palestinian maintenance worker whose family was forced to flee their home in Jaffa in 1948.  
 
 
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