By Ryan Jones
Nov 20, 2005
A majority of Israelis continues to believe Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is misleading the public and will evacuate many of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria as he did the Jews of Gaza, assuming he is still leading the nation after upcoming early elections.
Fully 70 percent of Israelis see another pullout looming involving some 80,000 Jewish residents of Israel's biblical heartland, according to a recent poll conducted by the One Nation movement.
After uprooting Jewish Gaza, Sharon repeatedly vowed he would not take such a step again for the sake of ?peace? with the Arabs, and insisted the settlements in Judea and Samaria were secure.
But after Sharon had likewise, during his previous election campaign, sworn that the Gaza communities were as permanent as Tel Aviv, few are buying his current assurances.
?It is clear that there will be another pullout from the West Bank [sic]; it is clear that it will take place prior to a permanent agreement? with the Palestinian Arabs, former Israeli consul-general in New York Alon Pinkas told Ynet.
Observers fear Sharon's current political maneuvering to unshackle himself from the Likud Party's Land of Israel platform ahead of general elections portends his intention to implement further dramatic unilateral steps.
Advisers to the prime minister told The Jerusalem Post last week that Sharon believes he must establish Israel's final borders before his time is up.
?There is no doubt that Sharon wants to draw the borders. Sharon thinks that only he can do it because he knows the land and this is his historic mission,? one adviser said.