'Many Israeli settlers would leave peacefully'

Jerusalem, May 31 : Forty-four per cent of Jewish settlers would be ready to leave their homes in the occupied West Bank without resistance if Israel decided to remove them, a poll published today by an Israeli newspaper showed.

The percentage of settlers said they would evacuate was up from 25 per cent last June, the poll conducted by the Geocartografia Institute showed.

The survey in the Maariv daily said a representative sample of the 240,000 settlers had been asked whether they would agree to leave under an Israeli ''realignment'' plan which calls for removal of some isolated settlements while strengthening others.

The survey, which included settlers who would be unlikely to face evacuation, did not ask respondents to explain why they might be open to leaving.

Many settlers who live in the West Bank stake a biblical claim to the territory. Others were attracted by cheap housing and tax breaks for Israelis in the territory, where Palestinians want to establish a state.

Settlement evacuations, which Israeli officials said could include some 70,000 people, are part of a plan by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to set a border unilaterally with Palestinians in the absence of peace talks.

Palestinians call the plan a land grab that could deprive them of enough land for a viable state. The World Court has determined that Israeli settlements on land captured in the 1967 West Asia war are illegal. Israel disputes this.

The newspaper also said a growing number of settlers had put their property on the market in recent years, and that this figure had risen by 15 per cent a year since 2001, a year after a Palestinian uprising began.

It did not provide a number of homes currently for sale.

Yet overall settlement expansion has continued during this period, despite Israel's obligation under a U S-backed peace ''road map'' to halt growth. Palestinians have failed to meet their promise under the peace plan to disarm militants.

Israel removed about 9,000 settlers last year during a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, evacuating Israelis for the first time from land Palestinians seek for a state.

Maariv said Olmert may carry out the West Bank plan in three stages, but it did not give a time frame. Olmert has previously pledged to set borders by 2010 if peacemaking remain frozen.

Reuters