Farmers About to Be Uprooted in Gaza Agree to Sell Greenhouses

Farmers from the Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip signed an agreement Friday to sell most of their greenhouses to a private international fund, which in turn will hand them over to the Palestinian Authority.

The deal, reached just days before the Israeli evacuation of the 21 settlements in Gaza is to begin, is aimed at preserving the settlements’ primary agricultural asset for Palestinian use. That could provide the impoverished territory with a much-needed economic boost after the hand-over.

The greenhouses use sophisticated techniques that were developed especially for Gaza’s desert-like conditions. Many Palestinians are familiar with the growing methods used in the greenhouses from years spent working in them, although the settlements had increasingly turned to Thai workers after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising nearly five years ago.

About one-quarter of the greenhouses have been dismantled and moved to Israel by their owners. The $14-million deal covers an additional 800 acres of greenhouses, which are owned by about 450 farmers.

The purchase is being made by the private Economic Cooperation Foundation, whose founders include Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians.

The foundation raised private funds to procure the greenhouses, including a personal $500,000 donation from James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president who is a special envoy for the so-called quartet sponsoring a Middle East peace plan: the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

“It shows that with some determination, one can get to the point of a rational agreement beneficial to both settlers and Palestinians,” said Stephen Cohen, a scholar with the New York-based Israel Policy Forum who helped broker the deal.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, is making final preparations for the start of the Gaza hand-over. Beginning Sunday, Israeli police will go on high alert, setting up roadblocks outside the Palestinian territory to prevent settler activists from flooding in.

Up to 4,000 protesters from the West Bank, many of them members of extremist groups, are thought to have infiltrated Gaza in recent weeks to oppose the pullout. Some are holed up in tent camps; others have taken over homes of settlers who have already moved out.

Police believe these militants, mainly in their teens and 20s, are more likely than resident settlers to put up violent resistance when Israeli soldiers and police begin forced evictions Wednesday.

Anti-pullout organizers have urged followers to try to thwart the evacuation forces by whatever means possible, including blocking roads and breaking through police lines.

The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, is worried about the possibility of attacks by Palestinian militant groups against Israeli soldiers and departing settlers. The most powerful of those groups, Hamas, repeated Friday that it would not initiate attacks during the pullout, but also reiterated its refusal to disarm.

“Weapons are a holy issue. It is impossible for us to relinquish our weapons even if we all are killed,” Ahmed Ghandour, a senior leader of Hamas’ military wing, told reporters in Gaza. “It’s not negotiable.”

Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.