Israel to dismantle 24 settlements

Cabinet tacitly accepts state's complicity in West Bank outposts

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updated 1:01 p.m. ET March 13, 2005

JERUSALEM - Israel’s Cabinet affirmed Sunday that it will dismantle 24 illegal West Bank settlement outposts, but the ministers did not give a deadline and evaded a decision on the fate of 81 more outposts, participants said.

During their weekly meeting, ministers were briefed on an official report that said successive governments helped build and expand 105 outposts over the past decade. The Cabinet adopted the report, including recommendations that new laws be passed to make it easier to dismantle outposts in the future.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Cabinet ministers he was committed to removing outposts as part of an internationally backed peace plan, but he did not say whether he was ready to dismantle all 105.

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The United States and the Palestinians have demanded the outposts, seen as seeds of larger settlements, be dismantled immediately.

Meanwhile, security officials said thousands more Israeli soldiers will be sent to the Gaza Strip to dismantle Jewish settlements this summer, after Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz decided to cut the evacuation time from the initial three months to one month.

Temporary fence
Also Sunday, Israel’s military chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon announced plans to build a temporary fence separating Jerusalem from the West Bank by July, leaving the structure in place while legal challenges to a permanent barrier play out in court.

Israel says the structure is needed to protect its cities from suicide bombers. But the Palestinians criticize the barrier, which juts into the West Bank, as an illegal confiscation of land they claim for an independent state.

Settlers established the outposts — usually starting with a few mobile homes, a generator and a water tank — in the past decade to break up Palestinian areas and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

Under the U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan, Israel promised to remove outposts established after Sharon came to power in March 2001. According to the official report on the outposts, 24 were established after that date, while 71 were built before 2001. In 10 cases, it is not known when they were set up.

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