Israel said yesterday it was counting on the US to help fund the massive cost of withdrawing from the Golan Heights in a future peace deal with Syria, as Jewish settlers stepped up their fight to keep the strategic plateau under Israeli control.
"I'm sure that the Americans know that such a process will be very expensive because it requires a military redeployment from bases and the building of new infrastructure, even without taking into account the civilian side," the Finance Minister, Mr Avraham Shohat, said.
"Everybody understands that the state of Israel cannot by itself support such a process with the kind of investment it requires," he said on Israeli public radio before the resumption on Wednesday of ground-breaking peace talks with Damascus.
Mr Shohat gave no figures, but the Yediot Aharonot newspaper said the cost of removing the 17,000 Jewish settlers and Israeli military facilities on the plateau could run to $18 billion, according to initial treasury estimates.
The Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Faruq al-Shara, said yesterday that a peace agreement between Israel and Syria could be reached within months. He also said that following the first round of talks between himself and the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, in Washington this week, further rounds would also be held in the US.
Mr Barak is to brief his ministers and parliament today on the state of the Syrian peace track before he heads to Washington to meet Mr al-Shara.
The campaign against a withdrawal gathered pace yesterday as settlers inaugurated a new housing estate in Katzrin, the main Israeli town on the plateau, in a symbolic gesture of defiance.
Settlers held a mass rally of more than 1,000 people in Katzrin on Saturday night to den ounce the withdrawal as "Barak's mad obsession" and map out a strategy to prevent Israel from giving back the land.
Mr Barak told ministers yesterday that peace talks with Syria could be wrapped up within "a few weeks" of their resumption later this week, public radio reported.