JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon 's plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip gathered pace with a bill on compensating settlers for loss of their homes to be discussed next week.

"Everything must be carried out in an orderly fashion and without panic," Israeli Justice Minister Yossef Lapid told public radio.

"There will be a law on compensation and settlers have no reason to worry because nobody will be cheated," said Lapid, whose center-right Shinui party is a strong supporter of the controversial pullout plan.

A bill on compensation payments is to be put to ministers for approval by the end of July, with a view to pushing it through parliament before the August recess, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

A new compensation, evacuation and dialogue committee is to start discussing the bill on Tuesday in a bid to have it ready by an end of July deadline, the paper said.

A new timetable leaked to the press Thursday proposes that Gaza settlers be able to apply for compensation for leaving their homes from as early as the beginning of August.

Settlers would be able to voluntarily leave the 21 Gaza settlements and four other Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank up until August next year after which the areas would be regarded as closed military zones.

Under the provisional timetable, all the settlers should have cleared out of Gaza and the four West Bank settlements by the end of September 2005.

A source close to Sharon confirmed to AFP that the leaked timetable was "an option" which "may be subject to changes."

"I don't know how authoritative the timetable is but the withrawal is certainly feasible," Israeli political analyst Mark Heller told AFP.

"A considerable number of settlers will be happy to leave if they get adequate compensation," he said, noting that the anti-withdrawal stance expressed by the settler movement's spokesmen "doesn't reflect a wall-to-wall consensus at all."

Israeli lawyers Yossef Tamir and Adi Porat told local media they had already been approached by dozens of families interested in early compensation.

Heller also predicted that Sharon would get his plan through, using the Labor parliamentary opposition as "a safety net" if need be.

After sacking two ministers opposed to the pullout last week, Sharon received cabinet approval for the principles of his so-called disengagement plan last Sunday but any actual evacuations, which will be carried out in four phases, will have to be ratified in separate cabinet votes.

Two ministers from the right-wing National Religious Party quit the coalition government in protest at Sunday's decision, leaving Sharon with the theoretical support of just 59 of Israel's 120 MPs.

With the main opposition Labour party reluctant to make common cause with the hard right, Sharon's government appears in no immediate danger of collapse.

Exact levels of compensation for the settlers have yet to be determined but reports say the average family could receive up to 300,000 dollars.

Those cashing an advance on their payouts will transfer their homes and other fixed assets to the government and receive full payment once the disengagement plan has been approved by parliament, although no date has been set for the vote.

Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters late Thursday that the cabinet vote Sunday allowed for "paying advances to anyone who volunteers to leave the settlements -- though it is still not clear what the size of the compensation and the advances will be."

The cost of the Gaza evacuation is estimated at 1.5 billion dollars, of which 450 million dollars are earmarked for security.

Some 7,500 Gaza settlers will have to leave or be uprooted as part as Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan.

The more modest West Bank pullout, only concerning a few hundred people out of a 220,000-strong settler population in that territory, should cost 110 million dollars.

In their closing statement Thursday, world leaders at the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Georgia, gave a thumbs-up to the proposal and pledged to "restore momentum" to the internationally-drafted Middle East peace roadmap.

Launched amid great fanfare last year, the plan, which foresees Palestinian statehood next year, has stalled amid persistent violence on the ground.