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April 22, 2005/Nisan 13 5765, Volume 57, No. 34
Furor follows report of more planned withdrawals
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Buoyed by American support for his plan to evacuate Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reportedly is considering a second unilateral "disengagement" that will determine Israel's permanent borders.
Though Sharon strongly denies such a plan, and President Bush continues to insist on a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on the internationally approved "road map" peace plan, the Israeli political establishment is in an uproar over the idea.
At their mid-April summit in Crawford, Texas, Sharon and President Bush agreed on the potentially historic importance of Sharon's first disengagement, scheduled for the summer, and agreed that the next step should be Israeli-Palestinian peace talks based on the road map.
But Sharon fears the road map may prove unworkable. And though he denies he is working on plans for a follow-up, second disengagement, one of Sharon's closest aides has acknowledged that if the Palestinians are unable to deliver on their road map commitments, a second unilateral disengagement will be one option Israel considers.
Such a plan is not without problems: It's likely to meet opposition from the international community, the Palestinians and Israeli politicians on both the left and right of the political spectrum.
Leading members of Sharon's own Likud Party say they're determined to block any attempt to push through a second disengagement plan.
Though Bush has expressed great admiration for the planned pullback from Gaza and the northern West Bank - describing it as a seminal event that could change the face of the Middle East - Sharon insists he has not broached the subject of a second unilateral disengagement.
On the contrary, he says he made clear to Bush at the Texas summit that Israel will renew peace talks with the Palestinians if they first dismantle terrorist militias and carry out promised security, economic and governmental reforms.
But Sharon will face a major dilemma: If the Palestinians don't carry out their commitments, will Sharon accept a situation of political inertia that could easily degenerate into renewed violence? And if they do, will he embark on peace talks that he thinks are bound to blow up over the issues of Jerusalem and refugees?
The furor over the second disengagement idea came April 15, when political analyst Shimon Shiffer, who covered the Crawford summit for the Yediot Achronot newspaper, wrote that Sharon's close circle was considering such a move if, as they fear, Abbas proves unable or unwilling to carry out his road-map commitments.
Well aware of the likely political fallout, Sharon vehemently denied that any such plan was in the offing. His office put out a statement saying the prime minister "is not planning another unilateral step of evacuating settlements in the West Bank, after implementation of the disengagement plan."
But Dov Weisglass, one of Sharon's closest advisers, was far less categorical. He said Israel's preferred option was to negotiate with the Palestinians within the framework of the road map, but if the Palestinians fail to carry out their commitments, Israel would consider other options. A second disengagement, as outlined by Shiffer, was one of them, he declared in an Israeli television interview.
Top Likud leaders are taking the scenario seriously enough to come out strongly against it. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom warned Likud "won't allow a second disengagement from parts of the homeland in Judea and Samaria," the biblical names for the West Bank.
Yossi Alpher, the former head of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies and now editor of the Israeli-Palestinian Web site bitterlemons.org, predicts that after the first disengagement is implemented in the summer, international pressure on Sharon to negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians will grow, leading to the collapse of the Likud-Labor unity government.
Then, perhaps in spring 2006, a re-elected Sharon will emerge with a plan for a second, limited, unilateral West Bank withdrawal, Alpher predicts. Sharon will present his new plan to Bush, and the American president will be sorely tempted to go along with it, in this scenario.
"The last thing Bush wants is to fail the way Clinton failed. And if Sharon says to him, 'You won't get a full-fledged peace agreement on your watch or on my watch, but you'll get progress,' Bush may well want to hear more," Alpher told JTA.
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