Gaza Demolition on Track, Israeli Says

The spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has denied a report published in the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times that Israelis and Palestinians had failed to agree on how to deal with the 1,600 houses of the Israeli settlers who will be pulled out of Gaza, beginning in August.

An agreement for Israel to destroy the houses and for the Palestinians to be paid to clear away the rubble was announced June 19 by the U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

The Israeli spokesman, Asaf Shariv, on Wednesday rejected the view of a senior Israeli official, who told The Times on Wednesday that no agreement had been completed, that his government had yet to decide whether to demolish the houses and that the Israelis and the Palestinians continued to disagree over what might happen to the rubble.

“Israel will demolish the houses,” Shariv said in a statement Wednesday. “The Palestinians will take care of the debris and will not bear the expenses.” He said the story “does not represent the position of the Israeli government, which remains as what was agreed upon during the visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and during the summit between Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.” But Muhammad Dahlan, the Palestinian minister in charge of coordinating the civilian side of the Gaza withdrawal, said Saturday that there was no final agreement about the houses, and that the Palestinians wanted Israel to take away the rubble that would be left over. Israel is refusing to take the rubble, Dahlan said, and what was an agreement in principle is foundering over details.

An international official working with both sides also said that there had been no agreement on what to do with the houses and the rubble, and that what had been decided in principle had never been fleshed out.

“The question of who would take the rubble never came up when Rice was here,” he said.

James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president who is working to coordinate the Gaza pullout from the economic angle, is due back in Israel in a few days, an American official said, to try to resolve the matter.

The Israeli official, who is involved in supervising all aspects of the Gaza withdrawal, said that political sensitivities and difficulties in negotiations with the Palestinians might result in Israel’s leaving the houses standing. His assessment of the status of the deal announced in principle but unresolved over details was supported by two other officials involved in the talks.

Shariv said that the suggestion by the Israeli official that Rice might have been misinformed by overeager Israeli officials was “an outright lie.”

Also Wednesday, the Israeli deputy prime minister, Shimon Peres, made an appeal to leave the houses standing. “These houses should not be destroyed, for the whole thing will take months and cost a fabulous amount,” Peres told Israel Radio. He said he worried lest the departure of Israeli troops be delayed for weeks or months while the houses were destroyed.

Peres has advocated more flexibility in dealing with security issues involved in the handing over of Gaza in particular in working to try to improve the ability of Palestinians to export their goods and to travel, once Israel withdraws from the territory it occupied in the 1967 war.