JERUSALEM, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday outlined a plan aimed at defusing the growing controversy within his cabinet over an illegal settler outpost slated for demolition.
According to the plan, the state would finance the physical uprooting and relocation of five apartment homes in Ulpana Hill, a neighborhood adjacent to the West Bank settlement of Beit El.
The legality of the 30-family community was cast into doubt in 2008, after a Palestinian man, represented by a local human rights group, petitioned the Supreme Court and claimed that it was built on private land that belonged to him.
While the residents argued that they legally purchased the property from the plaintiff's relative, the court in January 2011 ruled in favor of the Palestinian, later ordering the state to demolish the outpost by May 1 this year.
In late April, however, Israel's High Court granted the state's request to delay the demolition until July 1, in order to enable the government to review its policy on outposts deemed as illegal and find alternative housing for the residents of Ulpana.
Netanyahu on Sunday told Likud ministers that he seeks to relocate the homes intact to state-owned land near the settlement rather than having them razed by bulldozers. The alternative site being considered is a military firing range located a kilometer from the homes' present location.
The prime minister said his plan also calls for constructing 50 new homes in Beit El -- "10 for every structure slated for uprooting," as well as formulating a legal mechanism to prevent future lawsuits against settler outposts.
Sources close to Netanyahu said the plan mainly seeks to avoid recently proposed legislation to bypass the High Court's ruling on the issue of Ulpana, which in April sparked a bitter altercation between senior cabinet members.
"The government's goal is to defend and strengthen settlement, and also to preserve the rule of law," Netanyahu said, according to an official statement.
Netanyahu said that implementing the plan would require the approval of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, whose position on the matter is unclear.
Officials at the Prime Minister's Office and the Defense Ministry, which is in overall charge of West Bank construction and approval, estimated that the cost of relocating the multi-storied stone structures could reach 30 million shekels (near 8 million U. S. dollars) and said that experts were already drawing plans for moving the homes.
A senior engineer, however, said the project would require an investment of no less than 100 million shekels (26 million U.S. dollars).
"It's total madness. The state has gone crazy," the engineer said of the plan. "From an engineering aspect, it's like placing those homes on the moon."
Yisrael David, deputy chairman of the Israel Infrastructure Engineers Association, said projects of the kind Netanyahu is proposing are mostly limited to historic buildings slated for preservation.
"I think Israel will set a world precedent for wasting public funds. Instead of relocating the homes, the state could build the (Ulpana) settlers new estates at the same price," David told the Yediot Aharonot daily.
Ulpana residents, too, slammed the plan as "hallucinatory and unfeasible."
"Just like homes in the free world are not destroyed for statutory and bureaucratic problems with the status of the land, so too Ulpana won't be raised," the residents said in a statement.
It further noted that the area in question was established 12 years ago when Defense Minister Ehud Barak was prime minister, and that it was his government which sent them to live there by providing financial incentives.
On Sunday, the residents, backed by right-wing lawmakers, called on Netanyahu to abandon his plan and instead support two bills to retroactively legalize disputed outposts in the West Bank. Netanyahu has instructed his coalition to oppose the bills, which are due to be presented to the parliament for a preliminary reading on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Likud lawmaker Yisrael Katz and at least four right-wing activists were expected to join a hunger strike launched last week by five settlers to protest the pending demolition of Ulpana and other outposts.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank -- home to some 300,000 people -- have been a core issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 1967 war. The Palestinians slate the area to become part of their future state, and have conditioned a resumption of long-stalled negotiations with Israel on a complete freeze of settlement construction.
Netanyahu has previously stated that Israel would be forced to make "painful concessions" - hinting that many settlements would one day be evacuated, but pledged that large settlement blocs would remain under Israeli sovereignty in any future peace deal.
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