By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
Feb 20, 2005
Sunday’s combined cabinet votes on the planned evacuation of Jewish settlers and the route of Israel’s security fence highlighted the false premise on which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sold his “disengagement” plan to the Israeli public.
Sharon asserts that the planned retreat will result in Washington lending its support for continued Israeli sovereignty over the main settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria, which Israel plans to include inside the route of the security fence.
Sharon has repeatedly pointed to a letter from President George W. Bush as proof of this achievement, but senior US officials say the Israeli leader possesses no such commitment from his American counterpart.
Selling ‘disengagement’
Ever since making a 180 degree policy shift and unveiling his “disengagement” plan in December 2003, Sharon has insisted the only way for Israel to avoid losing everything it won in five wars with the Arab world was to surrender the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.
Sharon told the Israeli public that quitting these areas - Gaza in particular - would win international praise and support for the Jewish state.
He assured his voters that the move would result in the Bush administration’s backing for continued Israeli sovereignty over large settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria, where close to 200,000 Jewish settlers currently live.
Just last week, Sharon again asserted that Israel had not “made compromise or concessions without getting anything in return.”
“In the agreement between Bush and myself we [received] tremendous achievements that Israel never had since its establishment,” WorldNetDaily quoted the prime minister as saying in his annual address to the foreign press corps.
The security fence
Current plans for Israel’s “seam line” security fence see the Samarian town of Ariel, the Judean communities of the Etzion Bloc and the Jerusalem-area settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim included inside the barrier.
This fact is seen by most as a product of Sharon’s confidence that, with American approval, Israel will be allowed to annex these areas in the near future.
That Israel’s planned security fence does not follow the pre-1967 border, however, has been a source of constant US criticism.
Sunday’s cabinet vote
Combining the two issues at Sunday’s cabinet meeting illustrated Sharon’s continued reliance on the premise of give-and-take upon which he launched the retreat plan.
His ministers were asked to debate and vote on the implementation of the Expulsion and Compensation Law in four phases.
The cabinet is expected to reconvene for separate votes prior to the execution of each phase, each of which calls for the removal of different settlements.
Sharon also asked his government to approve the newly revised route of the security fence. Under the new outline, Israel would retain security control over some seven percent of Judea and Samaria, including the major settlement blocs.
The fence’s previous route put 16 percent of Judea and Samaria on the Israeli side.
No commitment from Bush
But Sharon’s assumption that surrendering Gaza and northern Samaria will enable Israel to hold onto large Jewish settlements elsewhere has yet to be endorsed by Washington.
Just days after Sharon received his supposed letter of commitment from Bush, the president told Jordan’s King Abdullah that the Israeli prime minister was making a bigger deal of it than was warranted.
“The US will not determine the results of the negotiations” by making such commitments, Bush told reporters after meeting Abdullah in May of last year.
Three months later, Washington leveled harsh criticism at Israel for approving the building of 600 new homes in Ma’aleh Adumim.
When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the region earlier this month, she reiterated that Bush had made no commitments to Sharon regarding large “West Bank” settlements.
The president “made very clear that everything had to be negotiated, that the final-status arrangements would have to be up to the parties,” Rice told reporters.
Naturally, no one expects the “Palestinians” to allow the settlement blocs to remain.
Following up on Sharon’s comments to the foreign press corps last Tuesday, David Bedein of Israel Resource News Agency queried the US Embassy in Tel Aviv over the prime minister’s declaration that “the government of Israel has reached an agreement with the US government to allow settlement blocs to remain in Judea and Samaria.”
When asked if the US government could confirm such an agreement, US Embassy press attaché Paul Patin firmly answered, “No.”