The Jewish Agency settlement department will put up 20 new settlements in an area bordering the Gaza Strip to be known as “Pithat Shalom” (the peace salient), Agency chairman Leon Dulzin told Rafah salient settlers last Friday. Fifteen of the new settlements would be intended to house the residents of the 15 Rafah settlements “so you will not have to start anew from scratch,” Dulzin reassured the worried settlers. “It will be a matter of transfer, not evacuation.”
Dulzin was received warmly by the settlers, who had given Premier Menachem Begin a rougher reception when he visited them some days earlier. Dulzin was accompanied by the joint heads of the settlement departments, Raanan Weitz and Mattityahu Drobless. Dulzin said all Rafah residents who were interested in the Agency built new settlements would be given the exact same conditions and facilities as they now had, and their own suggestions for improvements and ideas during the building would be taken into account. The government would be taken into account. The government would take responsibility for those who did not want to be transferred to Pithat Shalom, not the Jewish Agency, Dulzin noted.
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