By A.M. Goldstein

HAIFA —The military and police actions that evacuated Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip area and a small section of the West Bank are campaigns of the past, according to Brig. Gen. (Res.) Eival Gilady, who headed Coordination and Strategy in the Prime Minister's Office.

 "A dynamic that is now growing and developing will allow the start of a movement of people, who of their own free will move themselves out," he told a University of Haifa audience yesterday.

Speaking to the University's National Securities Studies Center on "Strategic Planning and National Security," Gilady said that the dynamic of settlement residents leaving their homes will cause a large proportion of them to vacate freely.

"In a settlement where only some 5-6 families remain," he said, "the level of services will deteriorate.  It won't be worthwhile for the supermarket to continue working.  And so a large proportion of the people will simply vacate."

Gilady believes that early next year the government will pass an appropriate compensation law, and this will lead to movement out of the isolated settlements on the other side of the separation fence. 

"No one will move them out," he predicts.  "I do not see any disengagement authority, and I don’t think the government needs to repeat something that we did not succeed with. 

"But we will offer a financial compensation package, and people will make their own decisions.  They will have time.  It won't be so urgent.  Vacating settlements within three-four weeks just doesn't go." 

In regard to Hamas, the strategic expert had both a warning and a prediction for his Haifa University audience.  He cautions that the organization will not abandon its ideology so quickly or easily. "What can be achieved," he believes, "is a basic change in the way they do things, in the pattern of their conduct."  He sees this change taking place within four-five months.

"I don't think it will be through elections," Gilady says.  "But there is a good chance that the reality will cause the Hamas government to fall.  They will then put together another government that will have other partners."

A.M. Goldstein is the English language editor for the University of Haifa's Department of External Affairs.