"Olmert is a public figure, so his ability to take action is limited. I am a private individual so I can more easily take action on reinforcing." It was the most delicately phrased sentence businessman Arcadi Gaydamak said in Sderot on Friday about Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Throughout last week they tussled over who would evacuate the people of Sderot and whether the city should be evacuated at all. On Friday the battle over who would build reinforced rooms for the residents began.

The director general of the Prime Minister's Office, Ra'anan Dinur, promised that by the start of the Shavuot holiday on Tuesday night the cabinet would decide on protecting Sderot and other communities around Gaza. Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council Chairman Alon Schuster told Haaretz that the promise was delivered to him.

	Advertisement

On Friday afternoon Gaydamak showed up in Sderot with three officials from the Rolan construction company. The four of them held secret talks with Mayor Eli Moyal, in the course of which Gaydamak offered to fund the costs of reinforcing apartment houses, to the tune of about $50 million.

The technical aspects of reinforcement are now being studied. Following a survey by the Home Front Command, the Housing Ministry is working on a final-cost survey and means of implementation. Sderot has 1,200 single-family homes with tile roofs and no security rooms. The Sderot city engineer considers these homes to be the most at risk. There are 5,000 such homes in the area around the Gaza Strip. Sderot has hundreds of other buildings without security rooms. Some have shelters but residents say they cannot reach them in the required 15 seconds after the alarm sounds.

Although the extent of reinforcement is still being studied, Gaydamak's proposal to the media was clear: reinforcing 3,500 apartment houses. The figures he had were given him by Rolan, which imports security rooms and builds them in apartment houses. According to one of the three Rolan officials, the Defense Ministry uses it as a contractor. According to Gaydamak, the decision to reinforce the apartment buildings in particular stemmed from the fact that this is the more difficult job. Gaydamak added that Rolan presented a detailed plan to the Defense Ministry to import security rooms that can be attached to the buildings. He also said the plan was approved by the Defense Ministry from a security point of view but no budget had been found to implement it.

When Gaydamak and Moyal left Moyal's office and Gaydamak presented his plan to the media, Moyal thanked him. "We are in talks with the government over reinforcement. The talks will reach their peak in the coming days, and then we'll decide." Moyal added that if there were no progress in talks with the government, he would choose the best option for the residents. He seemed to be indicating that whoever offered reinforcement first would win.

The power play between Olmert and Gaydamak did not end with the issue of reinforcement. A no less important issue these days is evacuation. A Gaydamak aide said Friday that he believed Gaydamak had sent around 450 families, or more than 2,000 people, to hotels in Be'er Sheva and Ashdod. Moyal said Friday that Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh had personally promised him to evacuate 4,000 people. But Thursday night, the Defense Ministry stopped evacuating. Senior municipal officials believe Olmert gave the order to stop because he did not want the pictures of people leaving. Meanwhile, thousands continued to leave the city organized or independently, and the streets were deserted on the weekend.