Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to reassess a decision to demolish homes vacated by Jewish settlers during Israel?s planned pullout from the Gaza Strip this summer, government sources said yesterday.?Our recommendation is not to destroy the houses,? Giora Eiland, head of Israel?s National Security Council, which advises Sharon, told Israel Radio. Government sources said Sharon would hold discussions in the next few days to reexamine plans to raze homes the government is purchasing from the 8,000 Israelis in all 21 settlements slated for evacuation from July 20.

?Destruction of the houses prolongs the (withdrawal) operation,? Eiland said. ?Secondly, if you destroy the structures, there is a question what you do with the rubble,? he said.?If you try to bury it, it takes a long time ...and if you want to remove it to Israeli territory, it would border on the absurd to start investing in hundreds of trucks to transport it.?

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz aims to complete the pullout in four weeks instead of the original seven, fearing prolonged confrontations with settlers who refuse to leave and their supporters, government officials said last week. In the radio interview, Eiland raised the possibility of transferring homes and other structures in the settlements to international ownership for eventual handover to the Palestinians.

He said demolishing houses in the settlements would also inadvertently wreck ?water, electricity, communications and road infrastructure, and all the other things which we have no prior intention of destroying?.

A Gulf property tycoon, Mohamed Ali al-Abbar, chairman of the Dubai-based Emmar Properties, held talks earlier this month with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on development projects in the settlement blocs after the withdrawal. It is not clear how the red-roofed, single-family settler homes would fit into any future project to provide housing for Palestinians in the densely populated Gaza Strip where high-rise buildings would likely prove more practical.

Some 1.3 million Palestinians live in the impoverished territory, which Israel captured along with the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. Sharon originally proposed the pullout from Gaza and parts of the West Bank as a unilateral disengagement from conflict with the Palestinians in areas he said Israel had no chance of keeping in any final peace agreement.

Destroying settlers? homes, officials said at the time, would prevent them from falling into the hands of Palestinian militants rushing into areas vacated by the withdrawing Israeli military. Sharon now aims to coordinate the pullout with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate elected on Jan. 9 to succeed the late Yasser Arafat.

Jeffrey HELLER