Israeli cabinet okays plan which includes benefits to settlements

Sun, 13 Dec 2009

Jerusalem - Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved a controversial map allocating national priorities, which includes allocating funds to West Bank settlements, among them isolated ones far from the "settlement blocks" Israel hopes to keep as part of a peace treaty with the Palestinians. Twenty-one ministers voted in favor of the plan after a five-hour debate at the cabinet session in Jerusalem, and five ministers, from the center-left Labor Party of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, voted against.

The cabinet also decided to set up a steering committee to decide within 30 days whether to keep in the proposal those settlements east of Israel's West Bank barrier, and whether to add the town of Ashkelon to the map. Ashkelon on Israel's southern coast pummeled by rockets from the Gaza Strip during Israel's military offensive against the salient nearly a year ago.

According to the Israeli Peace Now protest movement, 91 out of 121 settlements are included in the plan.

The "national priorities map," which decides government funding and incentives for housing, infrastructure, employment and education, was last revised in 2002, under former prime minister Ariel Sharon. All settlements were included then. Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert, was in the midst of redrawing the map - and excluding most of the settlements - when he left office.

Israeli officials said including settlements in the map was not an attempt to undo the 10-month partial moratorium on construction in the West Bank, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on November 25, in an attempt to restart suspended peace talks with the Palestinians.

According to the Jerusalem Post daily, the US was not told in advance of plans to include 91 settlements in the plan, but talks were held between the Netanyahu's office and Washington on the issue Thursday once the matter was publicized in Israel.

The US has been assured that the incentives given to the settlements as a result of being on the map will have nothing to do with housing or construction, the daily said.

The daily also quoted "a source in the prime minister's office" as saying the 120,000 settlers affected by being include in the map were only a small fraction of the total number of people who would benefit.

Voicing opposition to the settlements being included, Barak told the ministers at the cabinet meeting that his party believed the Galilee and Negev regions of Israel should get benefits, and settlements which were "a source of acts of extremism" in the West Bank" should not get the "prize of being included in the national priority map."

Similar views were expressed by Minister without Portfolio Avishai Braverman, whose spokesman said while "the increase in the Arab population included in the map from eight per cent to 40 per cent is an important accomplishment," he could not support the plan if settlements known to house extremist settlers were included.