ISRAEL:Israel will ask the US for $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 yesterday.
The special funding would be used to pay for the evacuation, stated to begin in mid-August, of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank, and the relocation of the 9,000 settlers to underpopulated areas of Israel.
In a debate scheduled for today, Israel's security cabinet is to consider a defence ministry recommendation to keep Israeli forces in the northern West Bank area where the four settlements are to be evacuated, government officials said.
The proposal, likely to disappoint Palestinians, appears to be a departure from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan", which says Israel will evacuate "all military installations in this area and redeploy outside".
The officials said the military fears that if troops quit the area, Palestinian militants could set up rocket production facilities and attack nearby Israeli cities.
Commenting on the Israeli request for US aid, a senior Israeli political source said it was "hardly surprising given the unprecedented scale of the disengagement plan".
Israel is among the largest recipients of US aid, and the $2.2 billion would be in addition to annual aid of around $2.8 billion. Much of the annual funding comes in the form of grants that are spent on US military exports.
Israel's Haaretz daily said the request would be made by aides to Sharon in talks with US National Security Council official Elliot Abrams this 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 "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 $3 billion to make up for damage sustained from Iraqi missile salvoes in the Gulf war.
Sharon casts the pull-out as "disengagement" from four-and-a-half 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.
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 ($1.74 billion).
The settlers facing removal have been encouraged by the government to move to the underdeveloped, outlying Galilee and Negev regions.