A Gaza Strip Settlement Agrees to Pull Up Stakes

Residents of a Jewish community in the Gaza Strip have agreed to relocate inside Israel en masse before the planned evacuation of all settlers next year, officials said Sunday.

Under the deal, all 20 families of the Peat Sadeh settlement in southern Gaza will move to the rural Mavkiim community near Ashkelon, about five miles north of the coastal strip, said Yonatan Bassi, who heads the Israeli agency coordinating the relocation of settlers.

It is the first settlement that has signed an agreement to move. The residents will leave between late March and late May, more than a month before Israel plans to begin removing all remaining settlers from Gaza, officials said.

Five families from another Gaza settlement will join the move to Mavkiim, an agricultural community mainly made up of elderly Holocaust survivors from Hungary. Bassi did not identify the second settlement.

The relocated settlers are to receive cultivable land in the farming village plus compensation for their current homes.

Peat Sadeh is one of 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza, all of which are slated for evacuation under the government plan. In addition, residents will be withdrawn from four small communities in the northern West Bank.

Although the agreement involves a tiny share of the approximately 8,000 settlers in Gaza, Israeli planners said it indicated that at least some residents were resigned to leaving Gaza.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has strengthened his hand by inviting the left-leaning Labor Party to become part of his conservative government. Labor, which is expected to join soon, favors the withdrawal and can all but guarantee that the Israeli leader has the votes to move forward.

Bassi said his agency had spoken with the leaders of other settlements recently in the hope of negotiating additional wholesale moves.

“Over the past two weeks, we have witnessed the beginning of a big move on the part of the settlers in the direction of dialogue with us,” he said.

Israeli officials hope to coax residents to leave in groups as a way of preserving community ties and reducing the psychological trauma of leaving homes behind.

Officials also want the settlers to go voluntarily to avoid clashes with the soldiers and police who would be sent to empty the communities. Last week, the primary group representing settlers endorsed civil disobedience to thwart the pullout, which it views as the forcible removal of Jews from land that is rightfully theirs.

Residents of the Elei Sinai settlement in the northern Gaza Strip have asked to be relocated as a group to a beachfront spot north of Ashkelon, but the site is used as a military firing range. The government has offered the residents other choices, but no deal has been reached yet.

The Knesset, or parliament, is working out a compensation package for settlers. Many homeowners have complained that the payments envisioned in draft legislation were too low. The compensation law is expected to be passed in the coming weeks.

In other developments, Palestinian officials said Sunday that 81% of eligible voters took part in municipal elections last week. The voting, which took place in 26 towns and villages in the West Bank, was the first Palestinian local balloting since 1976.

“We are proud of the participation. It showed we are civilized and respect pluralism,” said Jamal Shobaki, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of local government, as he released official results in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Candidates affiliated with Hamas did well in the local balloting -- the militant group’s first foray into electoral politics -- by capturing majorities in some of the 26 local councils that were at stake.

Fatah, the dominant faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed to have won 16 councils, with Hamas and independents taking the remaining 10. But Hamas said it had won in 12 communities.

Palestinian officials did not clear up matters in releasing the final tallies, which listed the names of winners but not their affiliations. Analysts also cautioned that the strong influence of clan ties in local races made it more difficult to use the results to gauge the strength of any particular party.

Shobaki said the elections generally went well, despite some long lines and the presence of Israeli checkpoints on the outskirts of towns and villages that he said kept some voters from reaching the polls.

Next month, 10 communities in the Gaza Strip will hold local elections that were delayed because of Israeli military operations, he said.

A further round of municipal voting is scheduled for April, involving a larger number of towns, Shobaki said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Cabinet approved measures to smooth the way for the Jan. 9 election of the Palestinian Authority president. The steps include gradually withdrawing Israeli troops from cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and allowing limited campaign activities in East Jerusalem.