In a major victory for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Knesset voted today to approve his Gaza withdrawal plan and vacate all settlements from the Gaza Strip and some from the West Bank by next year.
The vote, 67-45 with seven abstentions, marked the first time the Knesset has authorized the removal of any Jewish settlements. Sharon won with the help of leftist opposition parties, including Labor and Shinui. Many members of Sharon’s own Likud coalition, as well as religious parties, voted against the plan.
Two powerful Likud politicians, Education Minister Limor Livnat and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at first threatened to abstain, but then struck a compromise deal in which a referendum vote on the pullout plan would need to be held at a later date or both would quit the government. Both then voted in favor of the plan.
“The Knesset has decided by a majority vote and the decision binds us all,” Speaker Reuven Rivlin said after the vote.
Sharon said this week he would fire any minister who votes against his plan to remove all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four from the northern West Bank.
Keeping his promise, Sharon promptly dismissed Minister Without Portfolio Uzi Landau and Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Michael Ratzon today for voting against the plan.
In a meeting with journalists in the halls of the Knesset building, Sharon said today’s vote would be the last time the matter is brought before the Knesset. Any further steps toward implementing the plan will be taken care of only by the Cabinet.
Sharon added the government will initiate an extensive public diplomacy campaign beginning next week on the disengagement plan and its benefits.
Sharon now has to put together a strategy for actually carrying out the disengagement plan. Many in the settlement movement have been protesting the evacuation, and some have said they will not leave their Gaza homes.
Rabbi Abraham Shapira, former chief rabbi of Israel, has called on Israeli soldiers and policemen to refuse orders to evacuate settlements.
And IDF leaders have said they want to employ police instead of soldiers to remove Jewish settlers from their homes when the disengagement plan is implemented because a military presence could inflame settler violence.
Some settler leaders have been charging that Sharon, foreseeing violent confrontations, is secretly assembling a combat unit to carry out the withdrawal, as WorldNetDaily reported exclusively.
Several sources within the settler establishment have said Sharon is quietly putting together a special unit of soldiers composed of Arabs and extreme Israeli leftists who are more distanced from the settlement movement and less likely to refrain from using force to remove Jewish residents from Gaza.
Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told WorldNetDaily, “Today’s vote endangers both U.S. and Israeli interests by sending a message that Islamic terrorism pays. Just as the Knesset finally learned the Oslo Accords were a disaster, they will soon learn this Gaza retreat, which rewards terrorism, is a distaster as well.”
