Aluf Benn wrote this article a few weeks before Sharon’s speech this week. His analysis is quite relevant:
“Don’t be in a hurry to add Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon to the ranks of the left or call them “penitents” because of their proposals for unilateral withdrawals from the territories and the evacuation of some settlements. Listen carefully to what they are saying. Because what they are proposing, each in their own way, is not a peace plan but an update of the goals of the war against the Palestinians – and a guarantee that it will continue after the withdrawal.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read analyses that seriously conjectuure that Sharon’s speech hint’s at concession. Sharon, as has been often said, is a brilliant tactician. There are some who claim he has no strategy. But I think those who say that just don’t like his strategy, or don’t want to admit that a popular Israeli Prime Minister would carry it out.
Sharon is not Effi Eitam or Lieberman, or any of the others on the extreme right. Unlike Eitam, he is an ultra-nationalist, not a messianic religious Jew. Unlike Lieberman, he is a pragmatists who understands Israel has certain limits in what it can achieve. He has no compunction of dismantling settlements, if he has too. But he has no compunctions about slaughtering Palestinians either if, in his view, he has too. For decades already, Sharon has declared his strategy and goals, and has worked tirelessly to achieve them: maximum land under Israeli control with minimum number of Palestinians living within those borders. The rest of the Palestinians will be living in puppet states which are more like “reservations” or “Bantustan”-like states. If you understand that is his vision, everything he says and does makes perfect sense.
I obviously agree with Aluf Benn that Sharon’s plan is a recipe for disaster and is obviously immoral. But I don’t underestimate the brilliance and sincerity of the man. Which makes him all the more frightening.
