Last update - 00:00 13/10/2006
Shlomo Gravitz, head of WZO settlement division, dies at 60
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Shlomo Gravitz died Thursday at the age of 60 after a long illness. Gravitz was head of the World Zionist Organization settlement division and of the World Kadima Zionist Organization.
Gravitz will be buried in Binyamina on Sunday. The funeral procession will leave from his home village of Nahalat Jabotinsky. He is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.
Ze'ev Bielski, chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel and World Zionist Organization said "Shlomik," as he was known to friends and family, would be sorely missed. Bielski saluted him as a proud Jew, devoted Zionist leader and educator who devoted his entire life to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
During his tenure as head of the settlement division, Gravitz, who was considered a right-wing marker in the Kadima movement, upheld continued settlement in all parts of the land of Israel.
However, he was also a loyalist of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was elected on a platform of dismantling dozens of West Bank settlements in the context of the convergence or "realignment" plan.
"I believe in settlement in Judea and Samaria but I live with the realization that the realignment plan was necessitated by reality," Gravitz told Haaretz on June 22, two days before he was officially chosen for the position.
The settlement department of the World Zionist Organization is one of the most controversial bodies in the Jewish-Israeli establishment. This is the body responsible for the establishment of settlements in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). After 1967 the department established the vast majority of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Gravitz served in several senior positions in national institutions. From 1993 to 1998 he headed the youth and pioneering department at the Jewish Agency (which has since been closed), and from 1998 to 2002 he served as chairman of the Jewish National Fund in rotation with Labor-affiliated Yehiel Leket. At the age of 54, after he retired from the JNF, Gravitz registered for a law degree, which he completed cum laude in May.
Politics looked like a realm of the past but his old friend Ehud Olmert thought otherwise. At the beginning of this year, Olmert persuaded Gravitz to join the Kadima list for the Knesset in the 44th place, which turned out to have been unrealistic.