Hundreds of settler families slated for evacuation from the Gaza Strip expressed willingness to join the 430 families who have agreed to relocate to Nitzanim.
The Gaza Coast Regional Council of settlements initiated negotiations with the Israeli government on behalf of all settlers in Gaza over terms for joining the Nitzanim relocation project.
Any agreement arrived with the disengagement authority will be presented to the Knesset Ministerial Committee on Disengagement on Wednesday.
Last month, the Israeli government gave the settlers one week to respond to the Nitzanim plan, but it quickly modified the ultimatum, saying that settler families could join later on.
Yet only the 430 families who met the deadline are eligible for the temporary housing in Nitzanim until their permanent homes are ready. The government is set to complete a binding legal agreement with them this week.
The government does not expect all of the families to sign the agreement since not all of them have granted their lawyer, Shai Granot, the power to sign on their behalf.
So far, the government has ordered only 320 trailers as temporary housing for these families.ÂÂ
Negotiations are being held between the government and a few smaller settler groups, but sources in the government said that agreements with Granot’s group will be the outline for deals with the other groups.
Attorney Yitzhak Meron, head of the “Jurists’ Forum for the Land of Israel,†represents the Gaza Coast Regional Council. But because Meron has not been given the power of attorney by individual families, it is unclear how many settler families might sign up for any deal the council reaches with the government.
The Israeli government reportedly believes that hundreds of families might sign up, since Meron has claimed he could gather 1,000 signatures from settlers of the Gush Katif settlement bloc.ÂÂ
The Gaza Coast Regional Council demands that settlers from communities of widely differing character should not be mixed in one new community. In its view, for example, secular settlers should not be mixed with religious settlers, and settlers living in agricultural settlements should not be mixed with settlers coming from non-agricultural “community†settlements.
The government said that so far not a single community relocation agreement has been signed with any group of settlers. Under the terms the government has offered, each family from a community settlement would receive a 500-square-meter plot, while those from agricultural settlements would receive plots of 1.2 dunams (0.3 acres).
