(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?'

NY Times' Agenda Shines Through on Olmert Coverage

...Interesting that, in Rudoren’s world, public confidence in Israel’s anti-corruption crusade is dashed only when political figures like Netanyahu and Lieberman, detested by the Times, don’t incur the same fate as Olmert. At the Times and in its Jerusalem bureau, this is known as objective, fair-minded journalism.

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
15 May '14..

Don’t expect a simple, straightforward piece of reporting in the New York Times about an Israeli judge handing down a stiff prison sentence to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a bribery scandal (“Ex-Israeli Leader Is Given 6 years In Bribery Case,” May 14, front page).

Jodi Rudoren, the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, instead delivers a convoluted article that gives, first and foremost, pre-eminence to her own agenda, whether or not relevant to the actual criminal proceedings.

Even her lead paragraph is expanded to make room for an aside that Olmert “was on the brink of a peace deal with the Palestinians” when he was forced to leave office on corruption charges.

The particulars of Olmert’s criminal offenses are set aside in favor of the Times’ overriding interest in the “peace process.”

Rudoren also seems to be having a difficult time about the alacrity – or lack thereof – with which Israeli prosecutors pursue white-collar crime. Anti-corruption crusades by prosecutors, she writes, have been condemned as “overzealous” but also “inefficient.” Take your pick.

In loading up her piece with extraneous points, she overlooks some of the basic facts of the case. For example, readers are not informed until the eighth paragraph that the bribery charges concern Olmert’s tenure as mayor of Jerusalem – and not during his tenure as prime minister.

Again, swinging from one theme to an opposite theme, Rudoren reports that corruption has become an increasing concern in Israel. She concedes that the state has matured on this issue, “echoing protest cries in many parts of the world where citizens are increasingly demanding a level playing field and the rule of law.” Israel in sync with the rest of the world – a rare admission in the Times. In the same vein, she points out that a former president is serving time for rape, and three former ministers were sent to prison for taking bribes. So Israel apparently hasn’t been a slouch in putting some of the high and mighty behind bars.

No desire for a true, lasting peace. But we already knew that too.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary/Contentions..
11 March '13..

Ben Birnbaum’s thoughtful, well-reported piece on the Israeli peace process is one of those articles that can easily be interpreted as in accordance with anyone’s preexisting worldview: it’s a Rorschach. If you think Mahmoud Abbas is primarily responsible for the lack of peace, that will be confirmed by the description of Ehud Olmert practically begging him to take an incredibly generous deal and Abbas walking away. If you think Olmert is to blame for offering a peace plan on which he could not follow through simply to save his reputation as he prepared to leave office under a cloud of scandal and an approval rating close to zero, you will shake your head at the desperation he showed.

If you think Olmert and Abbas were peacemakers surrounded by petty schemers, you will not be convinced otherwise as you read of Tzipi Livni’s advisors telling Abbas not to take the deal so she could swoop in and claim the glory for herself, or by the same old mindless and manipulative game being played by “advisors” and “negotiators” on the Palestinian side who have been there forever and a day. (The Israeli names change over time, but the Palestinian names are always Mahmoud Abbas, Saeb Erekat, and Hanan Ashrawi.) So that’s the politicians; what about the people? In Israel, the people support peace, Birnbaum reports. The Palestinian people, however–that’s another story. Birnbaum chooses a delicate framing when he references a recent poll that “showed Palestinians preferred Hamas’s approach to ending the Israeli occupation over that of Abbas by a two-to-one margin.” I’m sure everyone can imagine what “Hamas’s approach” would mean, but for the record here’s the actual question from that poll (results, from left to right, are: total, in the West Bank, and in Gaza):

Given the success of Israel’s military counteroffensives against Hamas in Gaza, this is not simply a vote of no confidence. No confidence would be eight or nine steps up from where Abbas and negotiations currently rank among the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.