Israel intends to carry out additional unilateral pullouts from West Bank settlements, though soldiers will remain in the evacuated areas, a top political ally of acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed Sunday.
"It will be only a civilian disengagement, not a military disengagement," Avi Dichter, the former Shabak security agency chief, told Israel Radio. The process of carrying out a pullout will start immediately after a new government is formed following Israel's March 28 elections, Dichter disclosed. The entire process would take about four years, he said.
Dichter did not name the settlements which might be evacuated in but in its Sunday editions, the Yediot Ahronot daily cited him as saying the withdrawal would include at least 17 settlements. Some 15,000 of Israel's 235,000 settlers live in these settlements .
"Israel will have to define, by itself, its final borders, and that will involve the consolidation of smaller settlements into settlement blocs," Dichter said.
PA cabinet
Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) Salah Bardaweil stated on Sunday that his movement had finished the political program of the next cabinet. Al-Bardaweil told reporters that Hamas concluded the cabinet's program, although there were still some points contradicting several common issues of other Palestinian factions and powers.
"We were careful not to embarrass any of the factions or make Hamas abandon any of the Palestinian principles," al-Bardaweil said.
