Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon built his entire career fighting terrorists and opposing the cockeyed diplomatic notion of “land for peace,” wherein Israel forks over tangible geographic assets in return signed pieces of paper full of meaningless promises.
Yet in recent years, Sharon, 77, has lurched from opposing “land for peace” to supporting “land for nothing.”
Almost nobody in Israel wants to keep Gaza or govern the daily lives of over one million Palestinian souls crammed into the tiny sliver of seaside real estate. But the current so-called “unilateral withdrawal” is unilateral surrender. Israel will give away long-fought-over territory without requiring the Palestinian Authority to wage a real war against Hamas and other terror groups and without requiring the PA to pursue real internal democratic reforms to give pro-peace Palestinian moderates the freedom to speak their mind in public and in the media without fear of reprisals.
As such, Sharon’s gamble is bad for Israel. It is bad for the U.S. and our war on terror.
Back in May, Israeli Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky resigned from Ariel Sharon’s government for precisely these reasons. Sharansky, the one-time Soviet dissident imprisoned by the KGB in a gulag for nine years, has emerged over the years as one of Israel’s most principled and clear-thinking leaders. His best-selling book, The Case for Democracy won him a role as a key ally of President Bush in the administration’s effort to democratize the Middle East while simultaneously alienating him from his own prime minister.
Sharansky reluctantly but courageously concluded that he could no longer serve a government that would unilaterally turn over Gaza and large portions of the West Bank to Israel’s sworn enemies without getting anything tangible much less valuable in return, and without insisting upon democratic reform within Palestinian society. Sharansky was also deeply disappointed by Sharon’s refusal to allow a national referendum on the withdrawal plan before its implementation, now slated for August 17.
At the time I wrote that “one man in particular to keep an eye on is Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also opposes the unilateral withdrawal and whose aides say he will challenge Sharon in the next elections. Netanyahu has not yet indicated a decision to resign the government over Sharon’s moves.”
For months, Israelis who shared Sharansky’s fears urged Netanyahu to follow Sharansky’s lead. Quit the government. Take a stand. This is the security of Israel and the future of the Jewish state we are talking about.
On Sunday, Netanyahu did just that. He resigned from Sharon’s government saying, “Here in the Middle East there is a way to make peace, and this is not the way.” He warned Gaza could become a new base camp of terror. He warned the government against allowing the Palestinians to be rearmed, and warned against giving up Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egyptian border saying it would soon effectively become a new pipeline for arms and bombs coming into the radical Islamic terror cells.
In doing so, Netanyahu, 55, has been widely criticized for engaging in political opportunism, hoping better to position himself for another bid to become prime minister by stepping down for show rather than with any real prospect of stopping the Gaza pullout. The New York Times editorial page (not historically known for siding with Ariel Sharon in political battles), devoted an entire piece Tuesday morning to attacking Netanyahu’s “melodramatic” move as “political grandstanding.”
Even many close supporters worry “Bibi” waited too long to resign. They wish he had stepped down earlier, as Sharansky did, to make the move more clearly as matter of principle than politics. And though I’ve had similar thoughts–I liked what Sharansky did and when he did it–I believe Netanyahu did the right thing at the right time.
He has opposed the Gaza pullout plan from the beginning both in private and behind the scenes. But it was not as simple a matter to step down in May when Sharansky did. Netanyahu as finance minister has been deeply involved in trying to revive the Israeli economy which had been in recession for the past three years. He was steering badly needed tax cuts, privatization, deregulation and banking reforms through the Israeli parliament right up to the last minute in office. With the bulk of his sweeping free-market reform plan now in operation–and Israel’s economy and stock market steadily improving–Netanyahu finally had the freedom to step down from his governing responsibilities in a responsible fashion, and he did so.
Last month in Jerusalem I met with several top Netanyahu advisers as well as a former senior Israeli military intelligence official. They explained three reasons why this unilateral surrender is bad for Israel.
First, it is bad tactically. It makes Israel more vulnerable to Palestinian Kassam rockets. And it allows for the creation of “Hamastan” in Gaza. As Netanyahu has been saying publicly for months, radical Islamic cells such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade could very well seize control of the entire Gaza Strip from which they would be able to launch their murderous operations against innocent civilians in Israel and elsewhere.
Second, it is bad diplomatically. It makes Israel more vulnerable to international pressure to give up land for nothing.
Third, it is bad strategically. It teaches the Arab world that terrorism wears the Israelis down and persuades Jews to give up land for nothing, just as was the case five years ago during the withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
But Sharon’s unilateral surrender is not only bad for Israel. It is bad for U.S. The Bush administration is aggressively waging a forward-leaning war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Great Britain is now newly reenergized in the fight against radical Islam. How then can we possibly countenance the creation of a new terror base camp in the Middle East? It would represent a serious setback to the administration’s efforts. What’s more, it has nothing to do with President Bush’s “Road Map To Peace” wherein Palestinians are required to make tangible, demonstrable concessions and crack down on terror cells, not give them more room to maneuver.
What to watch for in the coming weeks:
‐Jewish violence against Palestinians. Last week’s reprehensible attack by a Jewish extremist against Arab civilians may be a portent of the trouble ahead.
‐Refusal of Israeli soldiers to follow orders. Israeli military sources tell me there is very real concern among Israeli generals that a significant percentage of IDF Reservists might not obey orders to implement the “disengagement” by forcibly removing Jewish settlers from Gaza. Few Israeli soldiers see themselves as trained and mandated to fight fellow Jews. Some have suggested the number of dissenters within the military could run as high as 30 to 40 percent. That is probably exaggerated. But the concern is very real.
‐A Palestinian civil war. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. “Abu Mazen,” is weak and has done little to fight radical Islamic terror so far, though Palestinian Authority forces have engaged in small skirmishes with Hamas and other groups in recent weeks. A giant power struggle is looming. It could get bloody, with thousands of innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire.
In the end, it is far from clear that Netanyahu has helped himself politically. Indeed, many in Israel believe he may have just scuttled his political career by alienating so many powerful political and financial interests who support Sharon and his plan. Which made his move all the more surprising to those who know how much he would like to be prime minister once again.
But regardless of his timing, his decision to oppose Ariel Sharon on this vital national-security issue was correct. Indeed, the one who should be stepping down from government service is not Netanyahu or Sharansky but Ariel Sharon himself.
Sharon has served Israeli national security well in the past, but that is no longer the case. Today, he is signaling surrender to those he has spent his life fighting. Perhaps worse, he is badly dividing his country just at the moment a far larger strategic threat is emerging: a nuclearized Iran.
–Joel C. Rosenberg is the New York Times best-selling novelist.
His latest political thriller is The Ezekiel Option. He previously served as an aide to both Netanyahu and Sharansky.