Sharon Meets With Settlers From the Gaza Strip

Seeking to defuse tensions over his plan to withdraw Israelis from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday met for the first time in months with representatives of the Jewish settlements that are to be emptied.

Among the topics was a new proposal by settlers that would allow them to move en masse to a coastal area north of Gaza.

The fence-mending session ended without decisions, but with promises of further talks, Israeli media reported.

It came a week after Sharon defeated the final parliamentary efforts by the plan’s opponents to scuttle the withdrawal of an estimated 8,000 settlers in Gaza and hundreds of others in the West Bank.

Pro-settler activists have vowed to try to disrupt the evacuation through civil disobedience.

But in a sign that settler leaders also are preparing for the transfer, they have sought increased compensation and asked to be moved as a group to a mostly undeveloped beachside area called Nitzanim.

Leaders of southern Gaza’s main bloc of settlements, known as Gush Katif, say residents would be likely to move voluntarily if their communities remained more or less intact in a seaside setting similar to the area they live in now.

Under the proposal, 1,000 or so families -- more than half of those slated for evacuation from Gaza -- would relocate to a bloc of communities that would be built for them in Nitzanim, on the Mediterranean about five miles south of the port city of Ashdod. The remaining 600 families would move to nearby sites, or to other areas in southern Israel and the northern Galilee region where the government is encouraging resettlement.

Sharon is said to support the idea and has pressed Israeli planners to hasten preparations for the withdrawal, which is scheduled to begin in late July.

But the proposal drew immediate fire from Israeli environmental groups, which say that building new communities in Nitzanim would spoil a roughly 9,000-acre expanse of environmentally sensitive sand dunes, threatening vegetation and some wildlife species, including deer and reptiles.

Environment Minister Shalom Simhon also opposes developing the area.

“Building a bloc of settlements in the Nitzanim area would inflict far-reaching environmental damage on one of the most important landscapes in Israel,” Simhon told Israel Radio.

Nitzanim is designated as a nature reserve, though it also has been used as a military firing range. Officials previously ruled out relocating uprooted settlers there.

But they have encouraged residents to move in groups to preserve community ties and reduce the psychological strains of leaving their homes.

Proponents argue that the new communities would occupy less than a third of the area.

In other developments, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said upon leaving for a visit to Washington that he would seek U.S. financial help for the withdrawal and relocation. Peres did not specify an amount.

Israel expects to spend about $1 billion to carry out the evacuation, which the Bush administration views as key to reviving progress toward its blueprint to reach a final settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a plan known as the road map.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to confirm that U.S. officials were considering financial assistance.

But on another issue, President Bush underscored American opposition to Israel’s plans to expand its largest settlement in the West Bank, calling any such move a violation of his administration’s peace plan.

“Our position is very clear that the road map is important, and the road map calls for no expansion of the settlements,” the president told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.

Bush’s comments appear to put his administration in direct conflict with Israeli government plans announced late last month to add 3,500 housing units to the Maale Adumim settlement along a road that would link the Jewish community with Jerusalem.

The settlement expansion is believed to be one of several issues discussed this week by U.S. officials and an Israeli government team in Washington to prepare for Sharon’s visit to the United States and meetings with Bush early next week.

The meeting Tuesday was Sharon’s first with Gaza settler leaders during the months he has steered his withdrawal plan through his Cabinet and the parliament, or Knesset. Some pro-settler groups were unhappy that the Gaza leaders agreed to meet Sharon.

Settlers once admired Sharon as the leading sponsor of the movement to build Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But many now deride him as a traitor who is seeking to forcibly expel Jews from homes they view as part of biblical Israel.

Sharon is eager to ease tensions over the withdrawal and unify his conservative Likud Party, which has been deeply split over the evacuation.

The withdrawal plan calls for evacuating all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the northern West Bank, a move driven in part by the high cost of security in areas primarily populated by Palestinians.

The fierceness of the opposition has stirred fear among Israeli officials that the evacuation could turn violent or that Jewish extremists might carry out a provocative act aimed at derailing the withdrawal.

Israeli police have announced that they will be on heightened alert Sunday, when a right-wing group has summoned followers to the Temple Mount.

The site in the walled Old City is sacred to Jews and Muslims and the scene of past violence.

Officials worry that the group’s presence at Temple Mount, which contains a mosque complex known to Muslims as Haram al Sharif, could provoke a violent clash with Arabs.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.