[IMRA: It should be kept in mind that Sela head Yonatan Bassi was not hired
simply as a technocrat to implement government policy but instead as a kipa
wearing withdrawal supporter who could be expected to attack, criticize and
even ridicule his ideological rivals in the religious camp in active public
debate over government policy. Bassi met Prime Minister Sharon's
expectations. From the first day, instead of telling the press "I am here as
a government employee to implement government decisions - not to debate
them" Bassi attacked, criticized and ridiculed his ideological rivals in the
religious camp who opposed the retreat. This exacerbated an already highly
sensitive situation making it considerably more difficult for Sela to act
effectively.]

Comptroller slams Gaza resettlement failures
Dan Izenberg, THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 7, 2006
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395557407&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

In a special report released for publication Wednesday, State Comptroller
Micha Lindenstrauss blasted the Disengagement Authority (Sela), the Prime
Minister's Office and the Finance Ministry for their poor performance in
handling the evacuation and resettlement of 1,750 families from the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank.
"A supreme and concentrated national effort was required of all the
ministries that dealt with the disengagement, and above all by the Prime
Minister's Office and Sela," wrote Lindenstrauss.

"I especially emphasize the bureaucratic procrastination in the conduct of
the Ministry of Finance as it emerges in the [previous] report on
reinforcing the Jewish communities on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip
and, now again, regarding Sela. The Finance Ministry and its head ought to
have initiated a speedy and concentrated action to remove the obstacles and
impediments [to the financing of the authority] in time," he wrote.

The trouble began immediately after the government decision on June 6, 2004
to establish Sela, wrote Lindenstrauss. It took at least two-and-a-half
months for the Treasury to submit its request to the Knesset Finance
Committee for approval of the allocation to establish the Disengagement
Authority. Formal approval of the request was given on September 26, almost
three months after the projected date, according to the government
timetable.

By December 12 people were working for Sela, but by April that number was
only up to 17. Another 38 were hired in the months before the disengagement
began on August 17, most of them in June.

Some of the delay was bureaucratic. It was only in July 2005, after Sela had
filed requests to hire additional workers in February, March and May that a
special government committee agreed to lift a hiring freeze for 42
positions. Lindenstrauss also found that the Disengagement Authority had
often submitted requests for workers much later than it should have.

Sela was aware of the lack of manpower caused by bureaucratic delays, but
according to Lindenstrauss, Sela head Yonatan Bassi "did not warn senior
managers of the Prime Minister's Office and the Treasury about the problems
with the necessary urgency."

The state comptroller also examined how Sela handled the resettlement of the
evacuees in the aftermath of disengagement, specifically how it fared in
providing the settlers with immediate temporary housing in the days
following the withdrawal and longer-term temporary housing for the period
until permanent housing was completed.

Lindenstrauss found that Sela had underestimated the number of short-term
temporary solutions that would be required for the evacuees. Despite knowing
ahead of time that it would need short-term housing for about half of the
families (870), Sela only prepared 800 hotel rooms.

On the day the evacuation began, the director-general of the Prime
Minister's Office said the government would have to cope with more than
1,000 families. Sela rented another 1,000 rooms, and by the end of the
evacuation, it had rented a total of 2,800 rooms at a cost of NIS 200
million.

Originally, Sela had declared that most of the settlers would only be
allowed to remain in the hotel rooms at full board for two weeks. But more
than six months later, hundreds of families still reside in hotels.

The move to longer-term temporary housing has been delayed because it took
longer than expected to complete construction of the mobile homes and other
temporary housing in Nitzan, Karmiya and Yad Hanna, and of the 840 rental
apartments in Ashkelon reserved for evacuees (at a cost of NIS 5m.), only 63
were rented.

Lindenstrauss also investigated the lack of support staff to help the
families in their transition to temporary housing, and the tardiness in
establishing a telephone information center for settlers to place calls
anonymously. Work on the center began in February, but it only became
operational a few days before the evacuation.
In a second report also issued on Wednesday, Lindenstrauss criticized the
government for not properly preparing local authorities for absorption of
the 1,750 evacuee families.

According to the report, the success of disengagement depended in part on
the ability of the local authorities to absorb the evacuees. Nevertheless,
the government did not do enough to include them in the planning stages, and
provided them with guidelines for handling the families too late in the
process.

The government also failed to specify who would pay for some of the special
services that had to be provided to the evacuee families, such as organized
transportation for school children, new daycares and kindergartens, welfare
payments, community activities and workshops, etc.

"The instructions that the local authorities received from the government
ministries and particularly from the Prime Minister's Office, the Interior
Ministry, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Social Welfare were
incomplete and insufficiently detailed," wrote Lindenstrauss. "The lack of
detailed instructions harmed the preparedness of the local authorities to
absorb the evacuees."

In Ashkelon, for example, the municipality and the Disengagement Authority
argued until the last minute over who was to be responsible for providing
social workers at local absorption centers for the evacuees and who would
pay for them. Agreement was reached just a few days before most of the
evacuees arrived in the city.

Lindenstrauss, however, accepted in part the claims of government
authorities that they could not provide more detailed information because of
the Hof Gaza Regional Council's refusal to provide information and files
about the settlers and their needs. In fact, the head of the council
threatened to fire any employee who cooperated with the government
authorities. Many of the settlers themselves also refused to cooperate with
the authorities, wrote Lindenstrauss.

Even with those evacuee services that were set to be financed by the
government, it took many months to determine how the grants would be
calculated, and consequently, exactly how much money each local authority
would receive. It was only in September, two weeks after the evacuation,
that the government finally decided on the criteria for allocating funds.

Until then, because they could no longer wait, some of the local authorities
began providing necessary services to the evacuees without government
approval and in violation of the law.

Also, during the period where funding guidelines were unclear, the heads of
the local authorities put pressure on the government to give them money to
cope with the immediate emergency. These allocations were not granted
equally, but rather according to the skills and connections of the
individual local leaders.