Israel Official Sees Vast Relocation of Settlers

Israel’s deputy prime minister said Sunday that separating Israel from the Palestinians could mean relocating tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and probably would spark confrontations with settlers and their supporters.

Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he envisioned “a very painful, difficult, heartbreaking process and a confrontation of unknown proportion in the life of the country,” according to Israeli media reports.

“It’s a serious crisis.... I expect it to be very emotional and very confrontational,” he said.

Olmert was referring to a so-called disengagement plan outlined last week by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who warned that Israel would act unilaterally to separate itself from the Palestinians if there was no meaningful progress in peace talks within a few months.

Among the actions proposed by Sharon is withdrawal from an unspecified number of settlements that sit in the heart of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He did not say which ones might be evacuated or when.

The political scene was further roiled Sunday when 13 members of Israel’s elite special-operations force, known as Sayeret Matkal, signed a letter refusing to serve in the occupied territories. They said military operations there violate Palestinians’ human rights.

The soldiers’ letter was similar to one signed in September by a group of air force pilots who said they would no longer take part in strikes on Palestinian targets in the West Bank and Gaza. The officers’ disenchantment comes amid rising frustration in Israel over the two sides’ inability to make peace and end the three-year Palestinian uprising.

It was such sentiments that Sharon hoped to address last week. In his speech, he said he remained committed to the U.S.-backed diplomatic blueprint known as the “road map” but warned that unless the Palestinians took steps to halt violence, Israel would withdraw to a yet-to-be-defined “security line” -- a boundary likely to carve into territory claimed by the Palestinians.

The proposal has been assailed by Palestinian leaders, who say that any peace deal must come through negotiations. Jewish settler groups also oppose Sharon’s proposal, saying evacuation is tantamount to rewarding terrorism. Some of the harshest criticism has come from within Sharon’s Likud Party, which has long taken a hard line against giving up settlements -- home to about 220,000 Israeli Jews -- or any other territory to the Palestinians.

One Likud member, Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz, said he would demand that the proposal be debated during a Likud meeting next month. Katz said the proposal could prompt two right-wing, pro-settler parties to abandon Sharon’s governing coalition, forcing the prime minister to forge a new alliance.

On Sunday, Sharon turned back an effort to debate the plan during the weekly Cabinet meeting, saying the matter had not been scheduled for discussion.

Olmert’s comments after the Cabinet session echoed remarks he made last week -- before Sharon’s address -- predicting that tens of thousands of settlers would have to be moved for Israel to carry out a unilateral pullout from Gaza and much of the West Bank.

Olmert, a close ally of Sharon, drew criticism when he proposed two weeks ago that Israel would have to concede territory to maintain the Jewish character of the lands it controlled. Demographers say the day isn’t far off when Palestinians under occupation and Arabs in Israel proper will outnumber Jews.