There is no money for reinforcing houses in communities near the Gaza Strip in the proposed 2008 state budget, Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal and the heads of four Gaza-area regional councils charged in an angry letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week.

Olmert had met with them in January and promised to reinforce Gaza-area homes in the coming year. A few months later, businessman Arcadi Gaydamak offered to finance the reinforcement of Sderot himself; two days after that, the Prime Minister's Office declared that a government project to do so had just been launched.

The project began with a Construction and Housing Ministry survey of the needs and the expected costs. According to sources involved in the survey, its conclusion was that the reinforcement would cost over NIS 1 billion ¬ just as the Israel Defense Forces' Home Front Command had previously estimated.