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Palestinian will to fight terrorism, dismantle terrorist organizations, and to prevent the areas from which Israel had withdrawn from posing a threat.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.

The Costly Price of Israeli Withdrawal: Lessons from the Past - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

Prominent politicians still advocate withdrawal from the West Bank. A simple analysis of pertinent basic data that appears in the Shin Bet’s terrorist summary for the year 2006 alone shows that the idea of withdrawal, which would imply the cessation of IDF activity in the area, could be misguided and dangerous.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 948..
14 September '18..

Twelve years after the tidal wave of terrorist violence known by the misnomer the al-Aqsa Intifada, one still hears prominent politicians, commentators, and political researchers advocate withdrawal from the West Bank.

An examination of data provided in the Israel Security Agency’s, or Shin Bet’s, terrorist summary for the year 2006 shows how misguided and dangerous the idea of withdrawal, which would imply the cessation of IDF activity in the area, could be.

To understand the following graph, one must recall that at the end of March 2002, Israel launched a large offensive against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the terrorists in the major towns in the West Bank to which it gave sanctuary. Not only did Israel physically retake all these areas temporarily, but it has engaged ever since in daily penetrations to make preventive arrests or apprehend those terrorists that succeed in perpetrating acts of violence.

The results were dramatic. Until the offensive, which was followed by another major offensive three months later, terrorism more than doubled each year since the beginning of the wave of violence in October 2000 up to and including 2001. After the offensive, the number of Israeli fatalities more than halved in each succeeding year. It is important to note that this reduction occurred before the completion of the most critical areas of the security fence and that the reduction in fatalities in the West Bank, which did not enjoy the security of the fence, was slightly greater than within the Green Line.

(Continue to Full Article)

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. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Israel and the denial of denial

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack/JPost..
17 August '12..

No matter how much denial is smugly stuffed down our throats by homegrown swaggering braggarts, any and every territory which Israel has ever ceded to its still-vital and still-implacable enemies became a breeding ground for festering terror and aggression against the still-vulnerable Jewish state.

It takes stupefying cerebral contortions to deny that this was unequivocally demonstrated in Lebanon (where Hezbollah mushroomed to monstrous proportions after Ehud Barak’s unilateral midnight flight of 2000), in Judea and Samaria (whose cities Israel relinquished post-Oslo), in the Gaza Strip (which in 2005 we ditched for the third time via Ariel Sharon’s disastrous disengagement) and in Sinai, whose border with Israel now looms as the most potentially explosive.

No degree of denial-neurosis can belittle this. Each Israeli retreat, without a single solitary exception, comes back to haunt us with vicious vengeance.

Reckless retreat allowed Hezbollah rockets to reach Hadera (they can probably do harm further south too).

Reckless retreat allowed Jenin and its sisters to fill our streets, markets and buses with suicide bombers.

Reckless retreat allowed Gaza to rocket Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, Yavne, Gedera and more. Rishon Lezion was put on notice.

Nevertheless, incomprehensively, a self-destructive denial syndrome was sanctified over and over as Israel’s nationally sanctioned policy. Withdrawing from territory has become a cyclical compulsion for Israel – nearly as old as the state itself.

Policy Debate - A Matter of Connecting The Dots

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
15 April '10

Dividing Jerusalem and putting the Old City under international administration will bring conflict – not peace.

Israel has to control the Jordan Valley in any deal with the Palestinians.

American guarantees that a Palestinian state would remain demilitarized can’t be relied upon.

A security pact signed by the United State can’t take the place of territory vital for Israel’s security.

It is naïve to think that withdrawing to the ’67 lines will bring Israel an enduring peace.

These are among the “dots” that polls, such as the recent survey carried out for IMRA by Maagar Mochot, consistently indicate the overwhelming majority of Israelis agree on.

And that’s important.

Because while withdrawal advocates may enjoy the support of most of the media as well as financial assistance from foreign governments and their surrogates, the dots back their opponents.

And it is considerably easier to enter a policy debate when all that’s left to do is connect the dots that the public already acknowledges.

That’s not just the situation in Israel.

Here is what American Jews answered last month when asked the most fundamental of questions in an poll commissioned by the AJC:

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.”
Agree 75% Disagree 20% Not Sure 5%

Outright rejection of the working premise of “withdrawal brings peace” religion.

That’s not to say policy advocates should be complacent. If anything, they should be encouraged by the results to make the effort to get the public to connect the dots.

Please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.