The Knesset Audit Committee has decided to launch a state committee to investigate the government’s failures regarding its obligations to the families evicted from their Gaza homes in the 2005 Disengagement Plan during the Ariel Sharon administration.

Supreme Court President Justice Dorit Beinish in the coming days will appoint the committee members.

Voting in favor of the investigation was committee chair MK Mickey Eitan, as well as MKs Prof. Aryeh Eldad, Amira Dotan, and Yaakov Margi. MKs Yonatan Plesner of Kadima and Avshalom Vilan of Meretz were opposed. Also opposed was Attorney General Menachem Mazuz.

Assistant Attorney General Yehoshua Shufman told committee members on Monday that the State Comptroller’s report of three years ago should not serve as a catalyst for such a move, the formation of a state investigation committee.

Eldad stated the state is obviously opposed for the simple reason such a committee is likely to point out the shortcomings, failures and the disparaging fashion in which the government addressed the needs of the former residents of Gaza.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)