1. ed remler said:

Ted, I have to disagree with much of what you say, and I think the Spanish debacle illustrates why. The UK and US are due for a major attack. US deaths in Iraq are increasing due to improved tactics by the enemy. Israeli deaths will probably increase for similar reasons. The German government which is facing election very low in popularity will be strengthened because the voters will be afraid of similar attacks on themselves. The French cock will cock-a-doodle, and return to its more open animosity towards the US and Israel, and will reduce its pressure on Muslims, again due to fear. Kerry will increasingly preach appeasement and withdrawal. Everyone will be ready to blame the Jews at the slightest excuse. Now is the time to lay low, keep up a strategy which is making the best of a bad situation.

The enemy will overreach; they always do. And even if Europe crumbles, the US will not. The greater the terror strike, the more ferocious will be the US reply. When this happens, the wind will blow the other way. That is when Israel should sail—with the wind and not, as now, against it.

Sharon, right now, for whatever reason, has everyone diplomatically confused and running about. All to the good, even if he himself, as so many seem to believe, is also confused (which I do not believe).

2. J. Lichty said:

A problem with the withdrawal plan (amongst them many)is that the US will not permit Israel to actually make the Palestinians pay any price for their intransigence. In short they call for complete surrender. "Sharon you can withdraw, but only if it makes the Palestinians better off everywhere." The US has said that they are concerned that this will send the message that terror works, but with their demands that is exactly what they are saying.

If unliateral withdrawal is to work at all, there must be a very public and tangible price associated with it to negate this message. (I personally do not believe that any actions other than unilateral ones are possible given the posture of the Palestinian Arabs -- who will not ever negotiate in good faith. I just happen to think that the unilateral action should be victory over the PA, real occupation and de-nazifcation and then transfer of self-rule only -- never sovereignty to these animals.

3. David S. said:

I agree with Ed Remler right, though I think his response ignores the problem of the American election. Yes, Sharon is cunning like a fox, and he is basically killing time. The Gaza proposal is part of an established pattern of floating trial balloons to condition American decision-makers to new parameters for Israeli action.

The Gaza plan appears to have been floated for two reasons. The first was to keep things on hold until Bush is re-elected and make everyone forget about the failure of Bush's brief attempt to be Mid-East peacemaker. The second was to shift the paradigm away from Oslo and towards unilateral Israeli action, including the setting of temporary-permanent borders. Bush and Sharon cannot publically agree on those borders yet, due to the geopolitical realities of US dependence on Saudi oil in an election year and the need for continued Arab acquiescence in the occupation of Iraq. Where they have already agreed is that Israel has the right to set its own borders after consultation with the US. They also have agreed that this is best done after the President's re-election - at which point the pressure on Bush to make nice to the Arabs will drop. So far, so good.

The problem here is that what Sharon doesn't appear to have imagined is the growing possibility that Bush will lose the election to Kerry, at which point Sharon's strategic manuever may well turn into a trap. Emboldened by Bush's defeat, the Palestinians will surely step up the terror and launch a new diplomatic offensive aimed at immediate Israeli withdrawal - since Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria will be easily painted as part of the old discredited Bush world order. Kerry will find it easy to pose as a peacemaker. Worse, he will be able to do so while pretending to simply pick up where Bush - meaning the State Department - left off before the election, tilting a bit more towards the Palestinians than Bush did, which is only to be expected, of course, since Bush and Sharon were right-wing buddies, and Bush just lost the election due to the unreasonable-ness (and presumably, the failure) of his politics.

Given the concessions that Sharon has already made to Bush about the route of the security fence, Kerry will naturally try to box Sharon in to a "unilateral" Israeli return to the 1967 borders. At that point, Sharon, or whomever, will be faced with the choice of a total and humiliating Israeli defeat at the hands of the Palestinians. Such a defeat will indeed pose an existential threat to the Jewish State, just like Ted describes. The only alternative left open to Israel at that point would be to reject President Kerry's advances and embark on a truly unilateral policy of withdrawal and annexation of land - which stops just short of lunacy, given the near-total dependence of the IDF on US political cover and military resupply. The reason it wouldn't be lunacy is that the alternative would most likely be worse.

I think the alternatives facing Israel at this point are rather grim. Option one would be to do what Ted says - for Israel to strike out on her own, right now. Option two is to sit tight, make acquiescent noises, kill a few more terrorists in Gaza, and pray that Bush wins the election. While there may be a strong lesson here about Sharon's decision to tie himself so closely to the American President, especially during an election year, it also seems clear that the situation will not resolve itself without Israeli action, and may only get worse if Kerry and not Bush is elected. What the above calculus suggests to me is that Americans who care about Israel's survival should vote for George Bush, and the Israelis should also make clear that they are an independent actor by standing up to the State Department and flexing their muscles with a daring raid or two - but nothing so drastic that it might cause political problems for Bush in the middle of his election campaign. If Bush loses the election, the Israelis should offer Kerry a polite choice - to continue the Bush policy, and allow the security fence to set de facto Israeli borders, or to publically break with Israel and watch the Mid-East go up in smoke at the same time as he is trying to extircate American troops from Iraq. The Israeli logic there would be that, hey, if you guys are going to move off the block because it's too dangerous, you have to give us a fair shot at defending ourselves in our own neighborhood. An America busy withdrawing its troops from Iraq under the leadership of President Kerry - having rejecting Bush's war on terror - would be in a bad position to demand that its main (read: only) ally in the region give up more land to its enemies while trusting in vague American commitments to ensure Israel's continued survival. The question then is whether the Israelis themselves would have the stomach for the mass deportations, the bombings and the diplomatic warfare that would follow, which I think would be even more horrific and isolating than anything we've seen so far - but still manageable, if the Israelis still have the will to fight and survive as a nation. Hopefully, they do.