JERUSALEM - Israel will ask the United States for US$2.2 billion, one of the largest aid requests by the Jewish state, to pay for its planned withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip, Israeli political sources said on Monday.
The special funding would be used to pay for the pullout from Gaza and a corner of the West Bank slated to begin in the middle of next month, and for the relocation of some 9,000 evacuated Jewish settlers to underpopulated areas of Israel.
Israel is among the largest recipients of US aid, and the US$2.2 billion would be in addition to annual aid of around US$2.8 billion. Much of the annual funding comes in the form of grants that are spent on US military exports.
A senior Israeli political source said the US aid request was the biggest in recent years, "which is hardly surprising given the unprecedented scale of the Disengagement Plan".
Israel's Haaretz daily said the request would be made by aides to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in talks with US National Security Council official Elliot Abrams on Monday evening.
The Bush administration has agreed in principle to help fund the Gaza plan, Haaretz said. Washington wants the withdrawals to consolidate a five-month-old truce and spur talks on a US-led "road map" for a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
The Gaza plan funding would be the biggest US aid package to Israel since 1992, when Washington paid US$3 billion to make up for damage sustained from Iraqi missile salvoes in the Gulf war.
When Israel held peace negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians in 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak asked the United States for US$20 billion to cover any required Israeli withdrawals. But the talks stalled and the request was scrapped.
Sharon casts the pullout as "disengagement" from 4-1/2 years of fighting with the Palestinians. He faces mounting hostility from rightists who condemn the move as a betrayal of Jewish claims on biblical land and a reward for a Palestinian uprising.
GAZA TO GALILEE
The cost of the Gaza withdrawal, the first time Israel will have uprooted settlements from occupied land Palestinians want for a state, is estimated at 8 billion shekels.
The Israelis leaving Gaza's 21 settlements and four of 120 West Bank enclaves have been encouraged by the government to move to the underdeveloped, outlying Galilee and Negev regions. This will require heavy investment in infrastructure.
"Israel cannot be just a country of disengagement," Deputy Premier Shimon Peres told Reuters. "We have to engage to rebuild a country and that is the development of the Negev and of the Galilee." He declined to discuss the amount of US aid sought.
The government will spread the pullout cost over three years to keep the national budget deficit from rising significantly.
Haaretz quoted government sources as saying the US money would be for military outlays like relocating army bases and for developing the Galilee and Negev.
The Palestinians, who were this week promised US$3 billion in aid from the Group of Eight industrialised nations, welcome the prospect of gaining Gaza but suspect Sharon plans to parlay the pullback into a permanent hold on much of the West Bank, where the vast majority of Israel's 240,000 settlers live.
Israel's building of a vast West Bank barrier has further fuelled Palestinian fears. Israel calls the project a bulwark against Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinians condemn it as a land grab, and the World Court has declared it illegal.
Israel on Sunday approved a section of the barrier it said would separate 55,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from work, schools and hospitals in the city when it is completed.
The Palestinians, who want Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, put the figure of residents who stand to be cut off by the barrier at about 100,000. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognised internationally.
- REUTERS
Israel seeks aid from US for Gaza pullout
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.