Insider reveals shallowness of Sharon-Olmert retreat thinking

By Dr. Aaron Lerner                  

The Sharon administration never took the time to seriously think through the idea of retreating from the Gaza Strip and never took the time to ponder the consequences of the retreat in order to learn from the experience.  By the same token, the Olmert administration has yet to take the time to seriously think through Olmert's idea to carry out additional retreats. No.  This isn't the speculation of a critical outsider. They are the shocking revelations of the outgoing head of the National Security Council (NSC), Major General Giora Eiland, the man who planned the technical side of the Gaza retreat for PM Sharon, in a 4 June interview in Haaretz. "When I assumed my office, on 18 January, 2004," Eiland explained, "there was only an amorphous term 'disengagement' from a speech in Herzliya. I asked Sharon how much time I had to formulate a plan and he told me, four months. But very quickly it became clear to me that [PM Sharon's adviser] Dov Weissglas had already met with the Americans and committed us to a major unilateral step both in Gaza and the West Bank. "Immediately after, Sharon committed himself to the evacuation of 18 settlements in the Gaza Strip in an interview to [Haaretz's] Yoel Marcus, and at that point the game was up. The planning process I had began blew up." The Haaretz editors were sure they had a big story. They printed it prominently at the very top of the front page. And while the radio broadcast media did give it some coverage during the morning drive time, by noon it was already safely ensconced in the nation's collective memory hole. The same thing happened two days later when, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin told in a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about the massive increase in weapons smuggling that has taken in the wake of the Gaza retreat. According to Diskin, since the IDF left Gaza, in September 2005, there were 11 tons of TNT, three million bullets, 19,600 rifles, 1,600 pistols, 65 RPG launchers, 430 RPGs and some 10 shoulder rocket launchers smuggled into Gaza from Egypt - more than the total of weapons smuggled in from 1967 until Israel abandoned control of the Egypt-Gaza border.

Will this cause PM Olmert to hesitate for a millisecond and think before he continues to plunge forward with his retreat idea? Probably not.  Diskin's remarks are also now just old news. For years Israel has suffered the consequences of a leadership with the catastrophic combination of hubris and shallowness. Their lack of depth handicaps their own policy making while their hubris prevents them from seriously entertaining the possibility that they are wrong. Is there a chance of this changing? Hard to know. But with the costs of their cavalier approach becoming ever more apparent  there is the very real possibility that the terrible consequences of the Gaza retreat will ultimately save us from implementing an even more devastatingly dangerous retreat in the West Bank.

Israeli policy driven by wishful thinking



"Do you agree or disagree with the following argument: even if a threatening sovereign Palestinian state enjoying the support of the Arab world will be established in the evacuated areas, the IDF could always act to get quiet at a relatively low cost: Certainly don't agree 9% Don't agree 30% - Total don't agree 39%Middle 5%. Agree 30% Certainly agree 11% - Total agree: 41%. Other replies 15% "

[Maagar Mohot Survey Institute telephone poll of a representative sample of  624 adult Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) poll commissioned by the  Zionist Organization of America - ZOA. And carried out 5-6 February 2006.]

Kadima candidate Ehud Olmert is part of the 41%.  And he is hardly alone in  the political world. The opportunists who joined Kadima for a Knesset seat even though they themselves oppose retreat are also part of the 41% The Likud politicians gliding through the election campaign as they gleefully plan for what they hope to be a post-Netanyahu Likud are certainly part of the 41%. If anything, the 41% is a serious underestimate.

One would have thought that the 1973 Yom Kippur War would have permanently tempered the Israeli hubris from the 1967 Six Day War but it didn't. It's true that the Yom Kippur War ended with Israel 101 kilometers from Cairo and also with the upper hand in Syria, but in the early days of that bloody war that caught Israel by surprise the outcome was far from clear. So much so that for many of my generation the image of then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan slumped in his chair in the command center clearly in shock will remain seared into our collective memories. Curiously enough, the war in which the Arabs had a decent chance to defeat Israel if they had had their act together more has since then been reinterpreted by withdrawal proponents as proof the Arab leaders must certainly have absorbed that it is impossible to defeat Israel on the battlefield.

Did Egypt conclude that war against Israel is hopeless or that it made sense to be patient and first arm with the best and most advanced western weapons American aid can buy and then wait for the appropriate opportunity? Yes, Israel is strong.  We have a great army with well trained forces and sophisticated equipment. But that hardly makes us invincible. A terrorist army within spitting distance of Israel's major population and industrial centers is not a minor nuisance.  It can, indeed, be parlayed into an existential threat in coordination with the radical states.

It is incumbent on Israel's leaders to address this challenge now, while the costs of action are low. The nation can ill afford the rule of leaders driven more by wishful thinking than serious analysis.