Interesting Take...

[Annie]

Could be, then a surprise good behavior by the Palistinians could be seen as unintended consequence. Makes as much sense as Sharon losing his mind...The comment section is worth reading.

http://gloriasalt.blogspot.com/2005/08/whats-it-all-about-arik_20.html

20 August 2005
What's It All About, Arik?

Love him or loathe him, Ariel Sharon is an intriguing man. There’s something about that kreplach physique and that slightly wall-eyed, goofy, avuncular grin that clashes jarringly with his laser-focused ruthlessness. With characteristic brio, he has just taken an epoch-making step in support of the quiet, wary Israeli majority, most of whom are still too bewildered and apprehensive and shaken by the trauma to the settlers to decide if they’re glad or not. In the process, he has betrayed an important constituency that considered him a spiritual kinsman.

The move was enormously risky. As I discussed a couple of days ago, the withdrawal could prove a visionary success or a spectacularly foolhardy lurch toward catastrophe. Sharon is no fool, though. He has the old soldier’s instinct for careful risk assessment. When he decided to evacuate Gaza, what result did he have in mind?

It’s tempting to see the evacuation primarily as a gesture toward peace, and I’m sure Sharon is hoping it will have that ultimate result. But if it comes, it will be peace Sharon-style – that is, peace with a vanquished enemy. The object of the withdrawal, I believe, is to change the rules of engagement in a war that is far from over.

Historically, Israeli politicians on the right have been much bolder than those on the left in taking steps toward peace with the Palestinians. It’s counterintuitive, I know, but it’s true. For one thing, their motivations tend to be practical rather than ideological, which enhances their credibility in the eyes of the Israeli public and gives them greater room to maneuver. They also tend to be more readily subjected to various forms and degrees of coercion by the Americans than are Labor governments. It was fire-breathing Jabotinskyite Menachem Begin who signed the peace treaty with Sadat in 1979, and ex-Lehi terrorist Yitzhak Shamir who, in 1991, reached across a table in Madrid for a handshake with a PLO representative and in one snapshot turned that organization from personae non gratae to putative partners for peace. Now, in 2005, Arik Sharon of all people – the quintessential right-wing hawk – has dragged the Jewish settlers out of Gaza to make way for an incipient Palestinian state.

When politicians on the left want to take similar steps, they can only get the public behind them by outflanking the Likud from the right. Rabin, for example, prefaced the revelation of the 1993 Oslo Accords with three strikingly hard-line moves: he banished 415 Hamasniks and Islamic Jihadists across the northern border (in response to a series of eight terrorist murders of Israeli officers within 12 days) , he ordered the first-ever lockdown of the territories, and he launched a full-scale aerial assault, Operation Accountability, against Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon in response to an escalation of tensions in the northern Galilee. Those moves, in all their practical logic, Draconian right-wing flavor and profound unpopularity abroad, reassured the Israeli public that their physical security remained uppermost in the prime minister’s mind. That reassurance was critical during the delicate period when the public was asked to take the massive risk for peace represented by Oslo.

So is the Gaza withdrawal in keeping with the dramatic peace moves of Sharon’s predecessors? Is the return of Gaza analogous to Begin’s return of the Sinai – a massive, painful gesture undertaken to forge a new relationship (yet to take off) with a former enemy? Is it more like Shamir’s handshake in Madrid – a gesture agreed to under duress, at the behest of an unusually impatient American administration, that neither the prime minister nor much of the Israeli population takes seriously? Or is it more like Rabin’s dramatic, let’s-hold-hands-and-jump-off-the-cliff overture to the Palestinians with the Oslo Accords?

This withdrawal is its own animal. Like the ostensible peace overtures that came before it, it was made possible by the support of an American administration. (Please see Zev Chafetz’s sharp recent article clarifying that point.) I believe that like Shamir in 1991, Sharon has no faith whatsoever that this move will lead to normalization between the two peoples or even a cooling down of hostilities. So what was the point?

Simple military strategy. Clear your own soft targets out of the way and then do what’s necessary.

I don’t mean by that that I expect Sharon to go on the offensive now against the extremists in Gaza. I don’t think he’ll have to. Not even the most starry-eyed leftist in Israel believes that we’ll never see another terrorist attack originating from the area. Removing the settlers from the field of battle dramatically broadens Sharon’s options when that inevitable provocation takes place. He’ll have to calculate the cost in world opinion of risking Palestinian civilian lives in any retaliation, but as we all know, Sharon doesn’t lie awake at night fretting about editorials in Le Monde.

The IDF is scrupulous about taking the fight to the real enemy and not to the enemy’s civilian population – take a look at the events of Jenin (yes, Jenin) for evidence of this – but I don't believe Sharon will hesitate to go for the throat of anyone who makes a mockery of the concession he and the settlers have just made, no matter who that individual might be hiding behind. Once the settlers are fully evacuated, he will be free to respond with the fury of old to Palestinian terrorism originating in Gaza. With or without the encouragement (or prodding) of the Americans, I suspect that that far more strategically advantageous state of affairs may have been reason enough for Sharon to take the political risk he did.

posted by Gloria Salt @ 9:15 AM