(Please Share) Sharon, Olmert and Israel's Non-Disengagement II - by Nadav Shragai

The late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denied that Israel was planning a second disengagement from Judea and Samaria, but it turns out that he and former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a secret team that was charged to look into the feasibility of the idea.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
31 July '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/07/31/israels-non-disengagement/

Fifteen years ago today, the day after Tisha B'Av of that year, 1,751 families (about 9,000 people) were evicted from their homes in Gush Katif and northern Samaria, along with thousands of supporters who had come to help them. A total of 26 communities in Gush Katif, the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and northern Samaria were turned into ruins in what was defined as either "disengagement" or an "expulsion." The unprecedented event, which then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon initiated as part of the peace process, is still etched on the hearts of many on the Right and the Left as a serious trauma and a major mistake in terms of defense and security.

As the years passed, a few reports were published about the second stage of the disengagement that Sharon had planned or considered for Judea and Samaria. In his final months as prime minister, prior to suffering a stroke that left him comatose, Sharon denied these reports.

Now new details are emerging that put these denials in a different light, especially when it comes to tactics. "Disengagement II," the "Realignment Plan" that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attempted to implement during his time in office, was cooked up under Sharon. Sometimes, things were done with his explicit approval, and sometimes without any response, but Sharon knew everything. He certainly didn't forbid work on the matter.

In December 2005, three months after the disengagement plan was complete, Sharon and then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a committee under the leadership of the director general of the Justice Ministry, Aharon Abramovich. It was a sort of continuation: Abramovich and his people had previously led the work of the teams that put together the legal and financial framework for the disengagement.

At that time, the team was asked to present the security and defense, economic, legal, and diplomatic framework for another withdrawal, this one from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), to be based on the lessons of the disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria. The committee was not given a mandate to lay down the borders of the retreat or decide which settlements would be evacuated, but was asked to map out the Israeli interests of another unilateral move for the area of the West Bank, if it turned out that there was no Palestinian partner for peace negotiations.

Thus, for example, Abramovich and his friends looked as the financial costs of evacuating 15,000 settler families (about 100,000 people) from far-flung communities. This would have been 10 times as many setters as the number evicted from Gush Katif.

Attorney Dov Weissglas, who at the time served as Sharon's chief of staff, tells Israel Hayom that these were "initial thoughts."

He clarifies: "We thought we needed to reorganize the Israeli presence in Jude and Samaria. No doubt, if Sharon hadn't been taken ill, the reality there would be completely different. It was a film that was cut off because of a power outage."

Weissglas confirms a report by the late journalist David Landau after the disengagement. In his book Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon, Landau wrote: "In October 2005, we all – [Weissglas], Sharon, his sons, Reuven Adler, my wife and I, went to the Galilee for a weekend. We talked for hours about the future … The disengagement from the Gaza area was a move in and of itself, but it was intended to be combined with an additional move that would come later that was based both on the Road Map [a plan devised by the Middle East Quartet and adopted by the administration of George W. Bush] and the desire to avoid an impasse. The thinking was to continue on to a similar action in the West Bank. We hoped that the security barrier would help create that reality, that the Jews living on the other side of the fence would start coming back to Israeli territory … that we would gradually withdraw our forces from more and more cities, more and more areas – without the whistles and bells of negotiations about a permanent peace deal, which would certainly get stuck on the issue of Jerusalem. That was exactly Sharon's thinking … that was where the decision to set up the team under Abramovich was made."

The committee's concern

Abramovich's team included Director General of the Finance Ministery Yossi Bachar, the Deputy Attorney General for International Law Shavit Matias, Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, and attorney Daniel Reisner. Abramovich worked in secret, far from the spotlight, while Sharon was flatly denying remarks by Olmert, who was acting prime minister, and his close associate Eyal Arad that a second disengagement was expected or being considered.

The committee's existence came to light only after Sharon fell into a coma and Olmert took his place. Olmert made the Realignment Plan one of his main issues and talked about it openly. Unlike Sharon, he didn't try to hide it at all. Abramovich, who moved from director general of the Justice Ministry to director general of the Foreign Ministry – along with Livni, who also switched ministries – continued his work.

In August 2006, after Sharon had been comatose for eight months, the committee submitted Olmert and Livni with a thick report that contained hundreds of pages and revealed a number of problems entailed in executing the move. The committee members started out by listing major difference between Gaza and Judea and Samaria.

According to the committee, the West Bank is "tactical terrain," whereas the Gaza Strip is topographically lower than Israel. The West Bank also has a number of water sources that are important to residents of Israel, which Gaza does not. The Gaza Strip is entirely closed off and easier to control from outside in terms of security. In contrast, the committee said, Israel would have difficulty finding a solution to the threat of rocket fire from hilly areas in Judea and Samaria, and there was also concern that Hamas would gain control of the large population centers there, making continued IDF presence in key parts of Judea and Samaria the most reasonable way of preventing rocket attacks and a Hamas takeover.

The committee members also assessed that in the case of a necessary military presence of that kind, Israel would not be able to receive international recognition of an "end to the occupation." They also expressed concern that a unilateral withdrawal would endanger the stability of Jordan, and observed that unlike Gaza, from whence Israel retreated to the Green Line, it wanted to hold onto the West Bank settlement blocs, part of the Jordan Valley, and east Jerusalem until a permanent peace agreement was signed.

'Arik asked, what will Condoleezza Rice say?'

The Sharon legacy of withdrawal for the sake of peace - by Barry Shaw

Bush and Sharon envisioned a Palestinian will to fight terrorism, dismantle terrorist organizations, and to prevent the areas from which Israel had withdrawn from posing a threat. Has any of this come about as a result of the Sharon withdrawal from Gaza? Absolutely not. On the contrary, the Gaza Strip has turned into one huge base from which Palestinian terror organizations constantly bombard Israeli towns and villages. They not only destroyed the rich agricultural development projects that Israel gifted them. They replaced them with terror training and operation bases.

Barry Shaw..
Israel Institute for Strategic Studies..
17 January '19..
Link: http://www.strategic-israel.org/4141/the-sharon-bush-letters-and-why-peace-is-not-possible-with-the-palestinians/

In 2002, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon wrote a letter to US president George W. Bush, informing him of his intentions to make a bold new initiative for peace by removing thousands of Jews from their homes in the Gaza Strip and completely withdrawing all Israeli forces, and he received a response from Bush.

In this letter, Sharon wrote, “The Palestinian Authority under its current leadership has taken no action to meet its responsibilities under the road map. Terror has not ceased, reform of the Palestinian security services has not been undertaken, and real institutional reforms have not taken place. The State of Israel continues to pay the heavy cost of constant terror.

“Israel must preserve its capability to protect itself and deter its enemies, and we thus retain our right to defend ourselves against terrorism and to take actions against terrorist organizations. Having reached the conclusion that – for the time being – there exists no Palestinian partner with whom to advance peacefully toward a settlement, and since the current impasse is unhelpful to the achievement of our shared goals, I have decided to initiate a process of gradual disengagement with the hope of reducing friction between Israelis and Palestinians.

“The Disengagement Plan is designed to improve security for Israel and stabilize our political and economic situation. It will enable us to deploy our forces more effectively until such time that conditions in the Palestinian Authority allow for the full implementation of the Road map to resume.”

THE RESPONSE from President Bush contained the following: “We welcome the disengagement plan you have prepared, under which Israel would withdraw certain military installations and all settlements from Gaza, and withdraw certain military installations and settlements in the West Bank. These steps described in the plan will mark real progress toward realizing my June 24, 2002 vision, and make a real contribution towards peace.

“We also understand that, in this context, Israel believes it is important to bring new opportunities to the Negev and the Galilee. We are hopeful that steps pursuant to this plan, consistent with my vision, will remind all states and parties of their own obligations under the road map. The United States appreciates the risks such an undertaking represents.

I therefore want to reassure you on several points.

Time to revisit the 'Iron Wall'

...“For a left-winger, you sound very much like a right-winger, wouldn’t you say?” Morris was asked by Ari Shavit in the above mentioned Haaretz interview. “I identify with Albert Camus” said Morris. “He was considered a left-winger and a person of high morals, but when he referred to the Algerian problem he placed his mother ahead of morality. Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts.”

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
i24 News..
13 August '14..

When Ariel Sharon announced his “disengagement plan” at the 2003 Herzliya Conference, he claimed that “the purpose of the disengagement plan is to diminish terrorism and to provide security to Israel’s citizens,” and that his plan “would improve our quality of life and boost our economy.” Since the plan’s implementation in August 2005, over 12,000 rockets have been fired into Israel and more than 5 million Israelis are living under threat of rocket attacks. Around the Gaza Strip, Israelis live in constant fear of a missile landing on their house and of terrorists popping out of their living room from an underground tunnel.

Israel has had to fight three wars to tackle the effects of the 2005 retreat (Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, and the ongoing Operation Protective Edge). As for the economy, Hamas has proved its ability to shut down Ben-Gurion airport and to bring Israel’s tourist industry to its knees. Operation Protective Edge is estimated to have cost $3.6 billion (direct military expenses and indirect damages to the Israeli economy). When Sharon submitted the disengagement plan to his Likud constituents in a referendum (whose results he ignored), he claimed that “after disengagement, the international community will no longer be able to assert that the Gaza Strip is occupied.” This also proved to be delusional.

Israel left Gaza, but Gaza never left Israel. In fact, Gaza is more lethal from without than from within.

Sharon came up with his disengagement plan to surprise his enemies from their rear, just as he did three decades earlier when he crossed the Suez Canal. In 2003, Sharon was under criminal investigation and his forced resignation had become a foregone conclusion. In addition, the Geneva Initiative put him on the defensive. His cynical tactical move proved masterful: the state prosecutor suddenly and mysteriously dropped all charges against him, and Israel’s left-leaning media re-branded its bête noire to Israel’s greatest statesman since Ben-Gurion.

But Sharon’s disengagement plan also expressed the zeitgeist of the Herzliya Conference, reflecting an emerging consensus among Israelis. After Arafat had rejected the Camp David proposal in July 2000 and the Clinton parameters in December 2000, even Israel’s most starry-eyed peaceniks were altogether horrified and disillusioned. In October 2000, Shlomo Avineri, an enthusiastic supporter of the Oslo process, published an open letter to Edward Said in The Jerusalem Post saying: “You were right, Edward: compromise doesn’t work … Thank you again for your honesty.” Benny Morris, who started his academic career as a “new historian” on the far left of Israel’s political spectrum said in an interview with Haaretz in 2004: “When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa.”

Yasser Arafat and the CIA - Truth and Misinformation

...In spite of all these assertions about the direct responsibility of Yasser in initiating the Second Intifada, some still persist in the belief that he was simply responding to Israeli provocation. Those who persist are akin to those who propagated the falsehood that a silly video that no one had seen was responsible for a planned attack against U.S. interests by 150 well-armed terrorists in Benghazi. However, the falsehood by Palestinians and their supporters in allocating blame to Sharon is more important than the present differences in Washington over Benghazi.

Dr. Michael Curtis..
American Thinker..
07 April '14..

What is there in common between the CIA and Michael J. Morell, its former acting director, and the late Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)? Very little, except that both were involved in misunderstandings about or manipulation of information about events with which they were officially concerned.

Michael Morell, who became acting director after the resignation of David Petraeus, became embroiled in two related controversies concerning the attacks on September 11. 2012 on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. The first is the question of who was responsible for the attacks? The other is the more unsettled one: why was incorrect information, whether it was known to be false or not, about responsibility for the attacks given to Congress and to the American public?

The debate on these two issues has gone on for 18 months. The first issue is now clarified, to the satisfaction of most reasonable people. The event was a preplanned attack carried out by 150 terrorists who were linked to some way to al-Qaeda, and not a spontaneous protest sparked by an obscure video as was once suggested. The issue here is why U.S. officials delayed calling the attack a terrorist attack, and persisted in downplaying the role of terrorists.

The second issue is still not completely resolved, for political or other reasons. The essential problem ranges around the question of who was responsible, deliberately or otherwise, for drafting incorrect or false statements. To her misfortune, Susan Rice, the then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was given those incorrect talking points and repeated on five TV shows in one day that it was the obscure video, not terrorists that had sparked the revolt.

The real nature of the event should have been clear from the start. The email sent, as the attack was occurring, by the CIA Chief of Station in Tripoli to Morell was that the event was “not, not an escalation of protests.” Nevertheless, the initial official narrative of the U.S. intelligence community was that it was a spontaneous protest. It is fair to ask if this was politically motivated in a deliberate attempt to prevent embarrassment of the White House or to limit any damage to the State Department, ultimately responsible for the safety of the diplomats in Benghazi.

Congressional hearings on the matter have not elicited a clear answer to the question: who wrote the original talking points and who altered them for public consumption? Morell admitted he removed the word “Islamic” from the reference to “Islamic militants” who were the guilty party, but it is still unclear who removed references to “al-Qaeda” from the talking points given to Congress. There are conflicting stories. Was it the group of intelligence officers from the Office of Congressional Affairs, or the officials from CIA public affairs, or the FBI?

This dispute over the Benghazi attack bears an uncanny resemblance to a similar event concerning Yasser Arafat. It concerned who was responsible for planning or initiating or causing the Second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000? Was it the PLO leader Arafat who was responsible or was it a spontaneous popular uprising that was caused by the visit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a few days earlier to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The version proclaimed by the Palestinian Authority is that Sharon’s visit to that Holy Place was the reason for the outbreak of the Intifada that lasted five years, led to suicide bombings against Israeli cities, caused more than a thousand deaths, and delayed any hope of peace negotiations. That narrative is part of the overall revisionist history in the Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood, the story of calamities caused by Israel. Yet the reality is quite different.

Can Israel afford to exist in twilight?

...Israel cannot afford to exist in twilight. If it were in a peaceful part of the world, if its people were not murderously hated by billions, if it were not constantly at war, it might be able to move through an undistinguished prosperity without worry or doubt; but that is not its fate. The Jewish State cannot persist in twilight. It will either fall into the darkness of an old night or step into the light of a new day.

Daniel Greenfield..
frontpagemag.com..
15 January '14..

Israel’s predicament today is the work of Rabin and Sharon; two generals turned prime ministers who launched ambitious ventures and died leaving them unfinished and their nation in twilight.

Rabin’s peace process destroyed Israeli national security and revitalized terrorism as a force in political affairs. Had he lived, he might have turned away from it. The idea had been thrust on him by the fringe left and he had grasped it as a hedge against the political oblivion of a leftist party that had lost credibility in a new Israel no longer dominated by the Socialist vision of cooperatives and bureaucracies.

That door was shut permanently by Rabin’s death and Sharon’s rise to power was made possible by the terrorist fallout from the peace process. Israelis had attempted to make earlier course corrections by voting for Netanyahu over Peres, but Netanyahu, proved unable to change the course of the nation. And so, after Barak’s disastrous retreat from Lebanon, Sharon’s hour came.

There had only been two politically acceptable options in Israel for dealing with terrorism; negotiated appeasement or holding the line. The latter meant making occasional forays after a terrorist atrocity into the territories under Palestinian Authority control, arresting a few wanted terrorists and then pulling back, and hoping the public would be satisfied.

Voters expected Sharon to go further. And he did.

After the Passover Massacre in 2002, Sharon issued a brief statement in which he dropped one phrase. “As we speak, the IDF is already inside the ‘Mukta’a’ (Arafat’s compound) in Ramallah.” Israeli forces took the compound and arrested Marwan Barghouti, the terrorist leader behind much of the violence, who has yet to be released despite international protests.

In a speech to the Knesset, Sharon said, “Our dead lie in a long row: women and children, young and old. And we stand facing them, facing the vacuum created by their murders, and we are speechless.”

“The murderous gangs have a leader, a purpose, and a directing hand. They have one mission: to chase us out of here, from everywhere — from our home in Elon Moreh and from the supermarket in Jerusalem, from the cafe in Tel Aviv and from the restaurant in Haifa, from the synagogue in Netzarim — where the murderers slaughtered… worshippers, walking in their prayer shawls to morning prayers — and from the Seder table in Netanya.”

“And there is one dispatcher: Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat.”

But it would not be Arafat who would chase Israeli Jews out of the synagogue in Netzarim. Sharon would do that. All that would be left for Arafat’s gangs would be to burn down the synagogue after its worshipers were gone.

Continuing to ignore the mistakes behind the myth

...The disengagement failed to reach any of its objectives. Hamas has taken over Gaza Strip, and the rockets possessed by terror groups can cripple half the country. The threats against Israel have grown significantly and terrorism has reared its head.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
14 January '14..

Now, after he has been laid to rest with full eulogizing glory, it is time to remember that the crown adorning Ariel Sharon's head did not shimmer solely with "steeled victory and golden hope," as President Shimon Peres put it, but was actually dulled by steeled failures and fool's gold.

Sharon, who has been lauded as an outstanding military commander and a brilliant strategist, made two crucial mistakes during his years as prime minister, and it is a shame that the sad farewell from the man is clouded by an attempt bury the truth.

Sharon was the one to coin the phrase "restraint is a sign of strength," despite knowing better than anyone else that terrorists see restraint as nothing but a sign of weakness.

He exercised restraint against the backdrop of unprecedented waves of Palestinian terror, which claimed the lives of 1,115 Israelis; and it was the successful Operation Defensive Shield of 2002 that proved how wrong he was to assume that "restraint is a sign of strength." History will judge whether hundreds of lives could have been saved had he launched the military campaign sooner, but this question must be asked.

Sharon's other colossal mistake was the 2005 disengagement from Gaza Strip -- a decision whose bitter results we are still dealing with today.

It is enough to listen to Sharon's "soft presentation" of the plan to realize that his premise was refuted yet again. He cynically ridiculed all the pessimists who predicted terror tunnels or rocket salvos -- which are now a reality.

Unilateralism - An abject failure and past time to put it to rest as well

...In the event that Israel withdrew from the majority of the West bank and pulled back to its security barrier, not only could it not expect any international recognition for its borders, but experience suggests that it should expect the West Bank to be turned into the same kind of lawless terror launch pad for Iranian proxies that Gaza and southern Lebanon have already now become. Sharon may be buried, but unilateralism is still alive and well. In the future Israelis may yet come to deeply regret not having buried this ideology with its most renowned practitioner when they had the chance.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
13 January '14..

While Israel may have now buried former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it is still far from having buried with him the idea with which Sharon ultimately came to be most strongly associated: unilateralism–the notion that if no partner for peace could be found, then Israel should determine its own fate, draw its own borders, and extricate itself from a conflict it has long wanted no part in. It was ultimately to this end that Sharon broke from the Likud, and indeed the settlement movement that he had long been the patron of, and established Kadima, the party that would give him the representation in Israel’s Knesset that he needed to carry out the unilateral disengagement from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

Sharon had been lying in a comma since early 2006, and despite the abject failure of unilateral disengagement from both Gaza and Lebanon, Sharon’s ideas have not lain dormant with him. Having been a territorial maximalist for most of his political life, unilateral withdrawal from territory may prove to be Sharon’s most significant parting gift to Israel and the region.

Today there is no shortage of politicians in Israel who still espouse the virtues of this strategy. Most notable among them is former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who in a sense first pioneered unilateralism with his disengagement from southern Lebanon in 2000. He was still voicing partial support for unilateral disengagement from the West Bank in 2012. And the idea remains particularly popular among many in Israel’s defense and security establishment. Avi Dichter and Ami Ayalon, both former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency continue to champion this policy, as does Omer Bar-Lev, former head of the general Staff Reconnaissance Unit and a Labor Party member of Israel’s parliament.

Just this weekend Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was outlining the possibility of withdrawal from much of the West Bank in the not-unlikely event that Israel’s latest round of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority produce no tangible results. In his obituary on Sharon, written for CNN, Oren writes, “A growing number Israelis are asking, ‘What happens if the process fails?’ One solution could be a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian population centers in the West Bank.” Oren suggests how things could be done differently this time, a sign that unilateralists do indeed recognize where the policy has unraveled in the past. Oren explains, “As in the disengagement from Gaza, the United States would endorse this move, but unlike in Gaza, most Israeli settlements would remain within Israel, and Israeli troops would still patrol strategic borders. Of course, the preferable solution is two states for two peoples. But if that proves unattainable, then Israel can still end the occupation of the Palestinians, preserve its security, and perhaps lay new foundations for peace.”

Unilateralism’s great strength is that it refuses to have any delusions about Palestinian intransigence. It refuses to allow Israel to be indefinitely held hostage by the kind of Palestinian rejectionism that has thus far rendered all attempts at a negotiated peace futile. Instead, the unilateralists advocate simply withdrawing to borders of Israel’s choosing. The problem here, however, is that unilateralism is still buying into some of the most fundamental and mistaken premises of the dovish camp in Israel. That is the belief that the conflict is about territory, and that Israel can trade land for peace by giving the Palestinians an agreed upon allotment of territory. Since the Palestinians have so far failed to outline precisely what amount of territory they would require before ending the conflict, negotiations on land for peace have thus far failed to deliver.

The unilateralists seek to bypass stalled negotiations through simply handing over territory to the Palestinians without the framework of peace talks, thus creating a de facto two-state solution. Yet this is a mistake. The two-state proposal is itself an Israeli creation and the Palestinians have never come close to unanimously acknowledging it as a preferable end goal. Israel can create a two-state scenario without Palestinian cooperation if it wants, but there’s no reason to think this will do anything to pacify them.

Both with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and with Hamas in Gaza, Israeli unilateral withdrawal was viewed by the Islamists as a retreat and a sign of weakness. Israelis had demanded nothing in return for the territory they abandoned, they had simply fled. Proof enough for the extremists that terror pays and that Israel’s resolve will always break eventually. In this way unilateral disengagement has emboldened Israel’s enemies to step up their war on Israel, which is not territorial in nature, but existential.

When Assessing Sharon’s Complex Legacy

...He wanted a secure Israel as well as an end to the conflict with the Arab world and if he did not succeed (and probably could not have even if he had not fallen ill) in the latter endeavor, he deserves credit for trying. But his career also demonstrates that while a lone wolf can sometimes achieve great things, a man who can’t work comfortably within democratic structures or listen to colleagues is also liable to create disasters. Ariel Sharon’s memory should be as a blessing, but his career is a cautionary tale about the inherent limits of his unique style of leadership.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
12 January '13..

When larger-than-life figures such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon die, writers struggle to adequately summarize their legacies. But few historic leaders are as as difficult to assess as Sharon, who died yesterday after lingering for eight years in a vegetative state following a cerebral hemorrhage suffered in January 2006. A man born in 1928 whose military and political career reflected the entire history of the State of Israel, there is simply no analogy to be drawn between Sharon and any contemporary American leader. It’s not just that he was, perhaps, the last of those who were part of the Jewish state’s founding generation to pass from the scene. Nor does Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza during his last years in power — making him a belated hero to many on the left and causing him to be reviled by his erstwhile backers on the right — entirely explain why it is so hard to neatly pigeonhole his career.

Love him or hate him, there was never any denying that Sharon was an extraordinary soldier and one of those rightly seen as one of the chief architects of the victories of the Israel Defense Forces during the several wars it was forced to fight to defend the state’s existence in its first decades. Nor could even his sternest critics deny that he was almost as good a politician as he was a military man. By the time illness felled him he bestrode his country’s political scene and, at least for a short time appeared to have permanently altered its balance with the creation of a new centrist party built around his personal reputation and philosophy.

But though the Jewish state’s enemies decry him as a war criminal because they believe Israel has no right to defend itself against those who seek its destruction, the problem with understanding Sharon goes well beyond the usual pro-Zionist/anti-Zionist arguments or even those that divided Israeli politics during his long career. Sharon may have seen himself as consistent in his concerns for his country’s safety, but his behavior and decisions always reflected an impulsive nature that was impatient with hierarchy and the norms of the democratic political process. As such, it is impossible to talk about what he accomplished and what he tried to do without resorting to conditional praise or criticism.

Condemns Sharon in death, ignores Phalangists, supports Dieudonné. Guess who?

...HRW has a halo effect as being one of the most prestigious human rights organizations. And in some parts of the world, perhaps it does some good work. But its standards are twisted into a mockery of human rights when the subject or object of the reports happen to be Jews. The standard for Jews to tolerate hate against themselves is lower than that for anyone else; while the standard for Jews to act in a humane manner is much, much higher than that of their neighbors. It is hard to find this to be a coincidence.

Elder of Ziyon..
12 January '13..




Human Rights Watch remains as disgusting as ever.

As Ariel Sharon died after his long illness, HRW is very sad. Not about his death, of course:

Ariel Sharon died without facing justice for his role in the massacres of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians by Lebanese militias in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The killings constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Sharon also escaped accountability for other alleged abuses, such as his role expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, prosecutable as a war crime. Sharon ordered the removal of all Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and from four West Bank settlements in 2005, but the overall number of settlers in occupied territory increased significantly during his term as prime minister.

“It’s a shame that Sharon has gone to his grave without facing justice for his role in Sabra and Shatilla and other abuses,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “His passing is another grim reminder that years of virtual impunity for rights abuses have done nothing to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace any closer.”

Now, if you do a search through HRW's archives of the word "Phalangist" (or "Keta'eb," which is the current name of that group in Lebanon, still an active political party) you will not find a single condemnation of their massacres in Sabra and Shalita. Every single time they are mentioned it is in context of - Ariel Sharon.

To HRW, the people who actually slaughter human beings and mutilate pregnant women are blameless. They are not worthy of any calls to investigation, there is no reason to seek justice from them.

How can this be? How can Human Rights Watch ignore the perpetrators of the crime and give the lion's share of responsibility to someone who, while he should have anticipated and stopped the crime, was not either its planner nor executor?

The answer is very simple, and it betrays the racism of Human Rights Watch and many other such groups, media and politicians:

Middle Easterners are expected to be savages. Arabs and Maronite Christians, in HRW's world, are animals. They have no free will - their actions are disgusting but inevitable, a consequence of their subhuman natures.

Jews, on the other hand, must act like human beings. They must prevent two sets of animals under their control from killing each other. Indeed, this is how human beings should act, and Sharon was correctly slammed by Israeli commissions for his not being proactive in stopping what was almost inevitable.

Human Rights Watch, however, only blames Sharon. The esteemed organization cannot be bothered to condemn Maronites or Arabs for acting like this - that is their nature. This is pure racism.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
.

Ariel Sharon, Larger than life by Caroline Glick

...Sharon was one of the warmest, most engaging political leaders Israel has ever seen. He had an infectious sense of humor, a true love of life, of Israel, and of Israelis that made even his greatest Israeli critics like him. Sharon was larger than life. His accomplishments and failures were similarly outsized. And while much of what happened to him, particularly at the hands of the media, reflects the larger predicament of all of Israel, there can be no doubt that Ariel Sharon was one of a kind.

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
12 January '14..

Ariel Sharon, who died Saturday at age 85, after being suspended comatose, between life and death for the past eight years, was the final Israeli prime minister from the generation that fought in the 1948 War of Independence.

And as with others of his generation, the growth and development of the country were reflected in his career.

Sharon was a dazzling military commander. He was one of the original authors of Israel’s trailblazing counter terror strategies. The large battles against regular armies that he commanded in the 1956 Suez campaign, the 1967 Six Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War are still taught in military academies around the world for their tactical brilliance.

Sharon was a risk-taker. The most prominent shared quality of his military battles and his political ones was that they were always over high stakes. As a general, Sharon’s gutsiness paid off in spades more often than not. As a politician, the results were less impressive.

His two big gambles as a political leader were the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. Although the results of both actions were mixed, Israel could have won the gains it made in both at far less cost, if it had not gone along with Sharon’s plans.

Perhaps the most notable way in which Sharon’s life is a reflection of his country, at least outside of Israel, is that the blood libels published against him in the Western media are of a piece with the overall slander of Israel in the European and US mainstream media.

Like Israel as a whole, Sharon saw his good name dragged through the mud by the Western media with tales published against him against which he had no means of defending itself. Sharon’s powerlessness was exposed in the libel suit he filed against Time Magazine for a 1982 article in which the magazine alleged that Sharon had planned the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps by Christian militiamen. When the jury rendered its ruling, it declared that although the story was false, Sharon had no right to monetary damages, because although the story was a lie, the lie was not actionable.

The 10th of Shvat and Ariel Sharon

...But did he achieve peace, in any form or measure and what about Israel's security - and standing among the nations?

Yisrael Medad..
Green-Lined/JPost..
11 January '13..

On the 10th of the Hebrew month of Shvat 2014, corresponding to 5774, Ariel Sharon passed away.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry's reaction included this observation:

...he sought to bend the course of history toward peace, even as it meant testing the patience of his own longtime supporters and the limits of his own, lifelong convictions in the process. He was prepared to make tough decisions because he knew that his responsibility to his people was both to ensure their security and to give every chance to the hope that they could live in peace.

During his years in politics, it is no secret that there were times the United States had differences with him. But whether you agreed or disagreed with his positions – and Arik was always crystal clear about where he stood – you admired the man who was determined to ensure the security and survival of the Jewish State. In his final years as Prime Minister, he surprised many in his pursuit of peace, and today, we all recognize, as he did, that Israel must be strong to make peace, and that peace will also make Israel stronger.

But did he achieve peace, in any form or measure and what about Israel's security - and standing among the nations?

As my wife noted some seven years ago, even Yoel Marcus, the man who interviewed Sharon on February 2, 2004 and published the next day the explosive and even shocking report of that conversation, realized but three years later, that

Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement turned out to be a serious mistake. It gave terror a boost, allowed the Iranians to call the shots in Gaza instead of the Egyptians, fueled anarchy in the Palestinian street and pushed the chances for an agreement even further away.

What Could Make an Israeli Party Dangerous?

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
02 December '12..

Polls don’t show former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s new political party having much of an impact on the Israeli electorate, but she is enjoying some success in attracting veteran politicians to her banner. Seven members of the Kadima party that she led in the last elections have jumped over to the Movement, as her party is dubbed. More importantly, she has attracted Amram Mitzna, a former leader of the Labor Party to run with Livni. Mitzna, who led Labor in the 2003 election against Ariel Sharon’s Likud, is likely to be named to the number two slot under Livni. In announcing his decision, Mitzna denounced the administration of Prime Minister Netanyahu as a “failed government” and said the right-wing tilt of the Likud Knesset list made it “dangerous.”

But Mitzna, who was highly regarded for his service as a general in the Israeli army and as mayor of Haifa, is hardly in a position to say the ideas of his opponents are dangerous. Mitzna is, after all, one of the original advocates of one of the worst decisions in the country’s history: the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza that led to the creation of a Hamas terrorist state on Israel’s doorstep.

The trap that Sharon built

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
23 November '12..

The cease-fire agreement that Israel accepted Wednesday night to end the current round of Palestinian rocket and missile attacks is not a good deal for Israel by any stretch of the imagination.

At best, Israel and Hamas are placed on the same moral plane. The cease-fire erases the distinction between Israel, a peace-seeking liberal democracy that wants simply to defend its citizens, and Hamas, a genocidal jihadist terrorist outfit that seeks the eradication of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel.

Under international law, Israel is not just within its rights to defend itself from Hamas. It is required to. International law requires all states to treat Hamas terrorists as criminals and deny them safe haven and financing. But the cease-fire agreement requires both the Israeli policeman and the Hamas criminal to hold their fire.

At worst, the cease-fire places Israel beneath Hamas. The first two clauses require both sides to end hostilities. The third suggests Israel is expected to make further concessions to Hamas after the firing stops.

Then there is the cease-fire's elevation of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government to the role of responsible adult. Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian President Muhamad Morsi openly supports Hamas. Morsi sent his Prime Minister Hesham Kandil to Gaza to personally express the Egyptian government's support for Hamas's criminal assault against Israeli civilians.

Over the weekend, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood held what the media claimed was a stormy meeting. Its members were split over what to do about Israel. Half wanted to go to war with Israel immediately. The other half called for waiting until the Egyptian military is prepared for war. In the end, the voices calling for patient preparation for war won the day.

And for their patience, the Muslim Brothers received the plaudits of the US government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her boss President Barack Obama were effusive in their praise of the Egyptian government, and joined Egypt in placing Israel on the same moral plane as a terrorist group.

Moreover, Obama and Clinton compelled Israel to accept wording in the cease-fire that arguably makes Egypt the arbiter of Israeli and Palestinian compliance with the agreement.

Aside from the administration's de facto support for the Hamas regime in Gaza, it is hard to think of a greater humiliation than Israel being forced to submit complaints to its sworn enemy about the actions of the sworn enemy's terrorist client.

And yet, for all of that, it isn't clear that Israel had a better option than to sign on the dotted line. Israel might have gotten better results if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak had ordered the ground forces poised at the border to take out a few Hamas ground installations. It certainly would make sense for Israel to end Gaza's electricity supply.

From disengagement to terrorism - The link between our past and current situation

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
13 November '12..

Speaking from the Knesset podium on the day his disengagement plan was approved on Oct. 25, 2004, in a tone that ridiculed his opponents, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, "They tell me that the disengagement [from Gaza] will be interpreted as a humiliating withdrawal, lead to an increase in terrorist attacks and present Israel as a waning power. I categorically reject this statement."

Then Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had no doubt at the time that the move was "necessary and correct, and will increase security for Israeli citizens." Meir Sheetrit, who was housing and construction minister at the time, dismissed claims by those who believed the move would threaten cities and towns close to the Gaza border and that Israel was "fleeing from terrorism." Sheetrit responded by saying, "I have never heard a more ridiculous claim."

Even judges of the High Court of Justice (with the exception of Justice Edmond Levy) ignored the warnings and refused to visit the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza. They made do with the opinions of state-provided defense experts and automatically assumed that plans like the disengagement "improve the country's security." They claimed that "the disengagement reduces the Palestinians' will to harm the Israeli population."

Seven years later, when the ritual public debate on the south is almost as frustrating as the situation itself, there is a loud silence concerning the link between our past sins and the current situation. The connection here between cause and effect begs itself, not for the purpose of saying, "We told you so," but primarily so that similar thoughts of additional withdrawals, with or without an agreement with a "partner" who until today refuses to accept our existence as a state or perhaps even as individuals, will never see fruition and will be rejected outright.

Unfortunately, there is no lack of central players in our political arena who have failed to abandon this dangerous trend in thought. Some want to implement the same plan in Judea and Samaria. Not by coincidence they are also the last ones to deny a connection between the evil that was unleashed upon us in the south seven years ago and its intensity, and the simultaneous end of an Israeli military and settlement presence in the area from which rockets are now launched against Ashkelon and Ashdod.

Arens - The Palestinian state and its Jewish refugees

Moshe Arens
Haaretz
20 September '11

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-palestinian-state-and-its-jewish-refugees-1.385447

Ariel Sharon carried out such an ethnic cleansing operation in the large Jewish settlement bloc in Gush Katif, using the Israel Defense Forces to forcibly uproot 8,000 Jewish residents and farmers from their lands.

Maen Areikat, the Palestine Liberation Organization's "ambassador" to the United States, announced last week that the Palestinian state, for which the PLO is requesting recognition by the United Nations, must be free of Jews. This presumably means that the areas that the PLO considers to be part of the Palestinian state will have to be cleared of all Jews residing there at the present time. In other words, the area must be ethnically cleansed.

Those nations who intend to vote for the admission of this Palestinian state to the UN, at the UN General Assembly or at the UN Security Council, will be voting for such an ethnic cleansing operation.

There may be some UN member states, among the Muslim nations, that are at present clean of any Jewish presence on their territory and intend to keep it that way. Adding a country to UN membership that is determined to rid itself of Jews and keep its territory free of Jews presumably presents no moral problem for them when the time comes to vote - and may even be a welcome addition to their "club."

But, what about the other UN member states? What about the countries of Europe who not so long ago, under German rule in World War II, were cleaned and sometimes helped to clean their countries of Jews? Does this vote not represent a moral dilemma for them? That will be interesting to watch.

That the Palestinians - whether those led by Mahmoud Abbas, who is submitting the application for membership at the UN, or those led by Hamas in Gaza, who are opposed to this application - do not want to see any Jews in their land is disgusting but not surprising. What is at first sight surprising is that they believe that such an expectation is actually realistic, that it is doable.

Freund: Three decades of retreat

Michael Freund
Fundamentally Freund/JPost
25 April '11

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=217834

The steady march of capitulation that began in Yamit and continued on through the Oslo process has brought this nation to the brink of disaster.

This weekend marked a profoundly painful anniversary in the history of the modern State of Israel, one whose agonizing consequences continue to haunt the Jewish state.

It was on April 23, 1982, that IDF soldiers descended on the Jewish community of Yamit in northern Sinai not to defend it, but to uproot and destroy it.

As part of the peace treaty with Egypt, then-prime minister Menachem Begin agreed to withdraw from all of the Sinai, which necessitated the forced evacuation of more than 7,000 Israelis who had made the desert bloom.

Over 2,500 of them resided in Yamit, which came to symbolize the resistance to the government’s plan.

Defense minister Ariel Sharon was tasked with overseeing the operation, which was carried out with brutal efficiency.

Indeed, the excruciating scenes of Jewish soldiers dragging Jews from their homes, carting off families’ belongings, and extinguishing communal life in the area, were indelibly stamped into the nation’s consciousness.

A dozen other Sinai communities were uprooted as well, and most of them were razed to the ground.

After a century of Zionism and pioneering settlement of the land, Israel was dramatically turning its back on some of its key core principles, all for the sake of a dubious peace with a dictatorial neighbor.

With its 61,000 sq. km, the Sinai consisted of more than 90 percent of the territory that Israel had liberated during the Six Day Way.

Home to more than a hundred military installations and oil fields valued in the tens of billions of dollars, the peninsula provided Israel with strategic depth and new frontiers.

But all that was torn asunder by the withdrawal from Yamit. And while it may have brought us 30 years of a cold peace with Egypt, conceding the Sinai will likely prove to have been a colossal blunder of strategic proportions.

Consider recent events in the region, which underline the perils inherent in turning territory over to our neighbors.

Gissin talks Sharon's Temple Mount visit 10 years later

Former PM's spokesman tells ‘Post’: Sharon knew Palestinians were planning violence, but wanted to show he wouldn’t compromise on J’lem.

Gil Hoffman
JPost
29 September '10

Future prime minister Ariel Sharon was told by his spokesman Ra’anan Gissin that visiting the Temple Mount could be used by Palestinians as an excuse for violence, Gissin said Tuesday on the 10th anniversary of Sharon’s controversial visit.

Palestinians began throwing rocks immediately after Sharon left the compound. The Palestinians called the uprising that began the “Al-Aksa intifada,” even though an IDF sergeant critically wounded in a bomb attack the day before Sharon’s visit is considered the first victim of the wave of violence, and Palestinian officials have admitted that then- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had planned the intifada months before.“It was a sensitive time during the High Holy Days and at the end of Ramadan,” Gissin said. “I told him the situation was tense in the West Bank and that [Palestinian general Tawfik] Tirawi’s people were planning to do something on the Temple Mount, whether the trigger would be Sharon or something else. Sharon knew he was playing into their hands, but he went in a clear-headed manner to prove that he wouldn’t compromise on Jerusalem and that Israel would stand up for its rights.”

The initiator of the wave of violence, Marwan Barghouti, later told the Al-Hayat newspaper that he had decided that Sharon’s visit would be the most appropriate moment for the outbreak of the intifada.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Let Jews build homes

Op-ed: Razing of ‘unauthorized outposts’ unjust, raises questions about rule of law

Moshe Dann
Israel Opinion/Ynet
29 September '10

Conventional wisdom says that “Israel promised (the US) to destroy all ‘unauthorized outposts,’ and, therefore, must fulfill its obligations.” If the government is looking for an excuse, this is a poor one.

The "promise" made in a letter in April, 2004 from Dov Weissglass, then chief of the Prime Minister's Bureau to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, was submitted "on behalf of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon;" the letter was not signed by Sharon, nor was it affirmed by the cabinet. It was, simply, "diplomatic correspondence."

Moreover, the letter contains conditions. "The Israeli government believes that further steps by it, even if consistent with the Roadmap, cannot be taken absent the emergence of a Palestinian partner committed to peace, democratic reform, and the fight against terror."

Using this letter to justify destruction of Jewish "unauthorized outposts" raises serious questions:

Does Weissglass' letter obligate Israel to carry out its provisions while ignoring its conditions? Does this letter obligate future Israeli governments? Was the letter approved by the cabinet (since it mentions only the PM)? Why didn't Prime Minister Sharon sign it? Other than Weissglass' letter, there is no binding agreement to destroy Jewish "unauthorized outposts," destroy settlements, or prevent Jews from building anywhere in the Land of Israel.

Asked to respond, senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office avoided direct specific answers. "This government is committed to the rule of law, and abiding by the law is paramount to maintaining a civil society." They refused to elaborate.

This begs the questions and shifts the argument to Israeli law and, vaguely, "rule of law."

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The 'disengagement' disaster, five years on

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
18 August '10

FIVE YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, the Gaza Strip was forcibly purged of its Jews. In the largest non-combat operation in the history of the Israeli Defense Forces, 50,000 troops were deployed to expel some 9,000 residents and destroy the 21 pioneering communities in which some of them had lived for nearly four decades. (Four communities in northern Samaria on the West Bank were also evacuated.)

The name given to this expulsion by Israel's government, then headed by Ariel Sharon, was "disengagement." The name implied, and a majority of Israelis appeared to believe, that by totally withdrawing from Gaza they would no longer be trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with Gaza's hostile and sometimes violent Arabs.

"What will we have gained by destroying thriving communities, dividing Israeli society, and embittering some of our most idealistic citizens?" one thoughtful Israeli commentator, Yossi Klein Halevi, wrote at the time in The Jerusalem Post. "The most obvious . . . gain is what we will lose: We will be freeing ourselves from more than a million Palestinians."

Many Israelis -- and many supporters of Israel internationally -- bought this argument, persuaded, perhaps, by the Sharon government's sweeping vision of the blessings that would flow from so radical an act of ethnic self-cleansing. "It will be good for us and will be good for the Palestinians," forecast then-Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was to succeed Sharon a few months later. "It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity, and a lot of joy for all the people that live in the Middle East." Olmert prayed that with disengagement, "a new morning of great hope will emerge in our part of the world," and that Israelis and Palestinians together would make the Middle East "what it was destined to be from the outset, a paradise for all the world."

Had any of this actually come to pass, the trauma and destruction of the Gaza expulsion might have been justifiable. In fact, disengagement was a staggering failure, a disaster in every respect. It was seen by most Palestinians not as a courageous act of goodwill and an invitation to peace, but as a retreat under fire, much like the Israeli flight from southern Lebanon five years earlier. It led therefore not to less terrorism but to more, as Palestinian militants vastly expanded their arsenal of rockets, guns, and explosives, and launched thousands of attacks over the border into Israel.

(Read full story)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

A Rhetorical Commitment from the Words-Matter Administration

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
23 March '10

Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech ended with a rhetorical flourish, reaching back to David Ben-Gurion to list the Israeli leaders who made “difficult but clear-eyed choices to pursue peace” by giving up land. Her final paragraph was an exhortation to continue this “tradition”:

For the state to flourish, this generation of Israelis must also take up the tradition and do what seems too dangerous, too hard, and too risky. And of this they can be absolutely sure: the United States and the American people will stand with you. We will share the risks and we will shoulder the burdens, as we face the future together.

It is extraordinary for a nation to advise another to do what seems “too dangerous, too hard, and too risky” — in reliance upon a promise of the first nation to “stand with” it and “share the risks” from far away.

Sometimes what seems too dangerous, too hard, and too risky is in fact too dangerous, hard, and risky. And sometimes you cannot be absolutely sure the United States will stand with you — ask Poland, Georgia, and the Czech Republic.

Or ask Ariel Sharon (if you could) about the Gaza disengagement, in which Israel turned over half the putative Palestinian state in one of those difficult but clear-eyed choices to pursue peace. As Bret Stephens notes in his column, the disengagement was done in exchange for a letter, signed by the president of the United States, containing explicit assurances (described in the letter as the “steadfast commitment” of the United States) about the positions the U.S. would take on (a) defensible borders and (b) the major Israeli settlements necessary to defend them. The commitment given in exchange for Israel’s dangerous, hard, and risky action proved inoperative (or “unenforceable,” as Hillary might say). This is not a tradition that any nation would want to repeat.

(Read full post)
.