1. Ted Belman said:

In my article posted in Dec '04 A Solution Devoutly to be Wished I correctly laid out the genesis of the agreement between Bush and Sharon and what the agreement contained.

Then in Feb '05 I wrote Nothing can Stop the Plan and said "It is because of this mutual plan that Sharon is riding roughshod over democracy and all opposition. What matters to him is that he deliver on his commitments to Bush. It was probably part of that plan that Labour be brought into the government to make it easier to accomplish"

2. Nathan Shuster said:

When the few fighters of the Warsaw ghetto rose up against their Nazi tormentors, their heroic act of resistance, tragically futile in the face of an overwhelming force arrayed against them, was a symbolic act of sacrifice, a message to the future inspiring those yet unborn. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a supreme expression of Jewish will and pride. They fought and died, but they refused go as sheep to be slaughtered.
It's too bad that Israel's leadership did not choose to use this example of Jewish defiance in its response to American pressure to "evacuate" Gaza and brutally uproot Jewish inhabitants from their homes.
Surely the consequences of that non-compliance would not have been as dire to Israel as the price paid by the heroes of Warsaw and
the inspiration of that refusal would have resonated through a thousand years of Jewish history.

Nathan Shuster

3. Joseph Alexander Norland said:

Ted,

I keep repeating, and I will do so again. One of Abu Omri's main reasons for initiating the Deportation Plot was to avoid being indicted for corruption and illegalities. This has been documented by the authors of "Boomerang" and at least for me is beyond dispute. I am appalled that such an egregious motivator has not ended up causing a Watergate-type scandal. It goes to show the control that the effete elite exerts on the media. I, for one, will not cease mentioning this fact.

4. Ted Belman said:

While I accept that one of the benefits to Sharon was the promise of the cessation of the crimal case. Nevertheless he neogotiated a rational agreement with Bush that has many other reasons to recommend it. I believe that the Israeli public armed with all the facts will see it as I do. They will judge the Plan on its merits and not on Sharon's motivations.

5. J. Lichty said:

I believe that the Israeli public armed with all the facts will see it as I do. They will judge the Plan on its merits and not on Sharon's motivations.

They did Ted, when they sent Mitzna packing in the last election. This decision has no mandate.

6. Salomon Benzimra said:

Let's stop dancing on pin heads. The crux of the problem is not Sharon, Bush, Omri, the State Department, the UN, the EU, etc. The crux of the problem is that for the past 13 years Israel has been tacitly accepting the false notion of "illegal occupation of Palestinian terrirtories".

Thirteen years later we are only harvesting the sour fruit of Israel's dereliction, whether it is in the form of terrorism, antisemitism, boycotts, uprooting of 9,000 people from their homes and so forth.

Having failed to stand firm on the root of the problem was a major mistake. The current repercussions are only the logical outcome of that mistake.

7. Al Gordon said:

Imagine if the argument made for disengagement was made for all of Israel. We are told that it is simply too expensive and too messy to protect 9,000 Israeli citizens (not "settlers") from Palestinian savagery. How acceptable would it be if the United States decided that protecting 5 million Jews in Israel just isn't worth it? It's too expensive and messy for so few people?

Furthermore, Sharon's staggering give to the Palestinians was made for nothing in return. If he had spent the last year warning the Palestinians that a new chapter was opening, and any act of terror originating from Gaza would be deemed an act of war and would be met with massive retaliation, that would be some consolation. But even that hasn't happened.

Someone said that disengagement will be a disaster that resonates through a thousand years of Jewish history. Unless Gaza becomes an example for the Palestinians of how the new Israel will respond to terrorism, I fear that's true.

8. Ted Belman said:

I regret saying that the plan was a good plan. I will publish an article on the subject.