Four compensation schemes on offer to evacuated settlers

The government will offer four alternative compensation plans to settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank, pursuant to the disengagement plan, according to the government's so-called compensation committee.

The committee, headed by Justice Ministry director-general Aharon Abramovich, is responsible for drafting legislation to enable the payment of compensation to the settlers. According to the Justice Ministry, the draft legislation will probably be submitted to the cabinet in October or November; meanwhile, committee members will hold talks with the settlers in an effort to involve them in the drafting process.

The legislation will cover some 1,600 families - about 1,500 in Gaza and another 100 in the four West Bank settlements. The families will be compensated for the loss of their homes, loss of income (for salaried employees) and loss of businesses in Gaza.

The housing compensation will depend on how long the family has lived in the settlement, where it chooses to relocate and its own negotiations with the state. The committee has not yet decided whether to pay the compensation as a lump sum or in several payments over the course of a few years. A separate task force will determine how the compensation will be taxed.

The four options for housing compensation are as follows:

l Replacement house: This option will be available to people who have lived in their settlement for at least four years and consider it the center of their life. They will be entitled to a replacement house of similar quality in areas in Israel that have been chosen as references for determing the amount of compensation. The payment will be based on the cost of land in that area plus the cost of building the new house, with the amount rising to a certain ceiling, depending on the length of time the family lived in the settlement. People not entitled to the maximum compensation will be granted a loan on easy terms to cover the difference.

l Payment for a typical evacuated house: This option is for those who have lived in their settlement less than four years, or who own a house in the settlement but live elsewhere. Their compensation will be based on a government assessor's estimate of the value of a typical house of that kind in the settlement, rather than the value of an equivalent house inside Israel.

*Communal resettlement: This is the government's preferred option. It calls for the settlers, as individuals or as groups, to be resettled in communities located in priority areas inside Israel, to be chosen by the government. Residents of the northern West Bank, for instance, will be encouraged to move to the Gilboa and Galilee regions, which may be near their current work places. This option would enable the settlers to maintain their current communal framework, and it would also allow the government to increase the population of less populated areas in Israel. Those who choose this option will essentially be given land for free, via a loan that turns into a grant after five years of residence. The choice of communities and of specific plots of land within those communities will be on a first come, first serve basis.

*Personal compensation: Every evacuated settler can ask for a government assessor to estimate the value of his house, instead of using standard compensation tables. In this way, the government hopes to ensure that every person at least receives the full value of his house.

The compensation committee, which began work even before the cabinet approved the disengagement plan on June 6, includes four subcommittees: on legislation, taxation, cooperative associations, and the Erez industrial zone, from which some 100 Israeli businesses are slated to be evacuated. Evacuating the latter is politically much easier than evacuating settlements, but the assessment of businesses' values is far more complex.

The committee has tried to learn the lessons of the 1982 evacuation of the Sinai settlements, the main one being the need for dialogue with the settlers before the evacuation. Many Sinai evacuees felt that the state had imposed an arrangement on them and was inattentive to their needs.