JERUSALEM, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Israel is offering $158,000 in initial compensation to each of the families of the 45 people, including Americans and Canadians, who died in a crush at a Jewish pilgrimage site last year, officials said.
They said the 500,000 shekel packages, approved by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's cabinet on Sunday, are intended to relieve economic duress and could be deducted from any eventual legal settlement decided by a state commission of inquiry.
That panel's chairperson, former Supreme Court chief justice Miriam Naor, died at Monday, aged 74, a spokeswoman said. It was not immediately clear how this might impact the panel's work.
Tens of thousands came on April 30 to the hilltop site of Meron for the Lag B'Omer bonfire festival. When a crowd surged into a narrow tunnel, 45 men and boys were asphyxiated or trampled to death.
"The compensation will not bring back the 45 people who were killed there but will, at least, assist the families in getting through this very difficult period," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told his cabinet.
Naor's panel submitted interim findings in November, which Bennett said would be implemented ahead of the next Lag B'Omer gathering at Meron this May.
"We will allow it to be held in a safe manner. Those who go up to Mount Meron will not have to risk their lives," he said.
($1 = 3.1603 shekels) (Reporting by Steven Scheer and Dan Williams, Editing by William Maclean)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
