The events of this week, which opened with eight Israeli terror victims being buried at the same time as Israel was placed on trial at The Hague for trying to defend itself from terror, have about as much in common with reality as a painting by Salvador Dali.

There is something surreal in the spectacle of thousands of Israelis and our supporters marching through the streets of a Dutch city holding pictures of our terror victims as Israel is libeled in a show trial produced and directed by our murderers.

There is something surreal about the picture of gowned judges marching into a courtroom to hear arguments about how a law is broken when Israel attempts to prevent more of its citizens from being murdered by terrorist armies.

There is something surreal about the televised footage of Avi Ohayon – whose two small sons Ohad and Matan and ex-wife Revital were gunned down in their home by a Fatah terrorist – begging cameramen to take his picture with their photographs.

And there is something grotesque about the fact that the British and Swedish governments are paying the salaries of the Palestinian "lawyers" who stand before a kangaroo court and claim that Israel is breaking a law, any law, in trying to prevent more children and mothers from sharing this fate.

Given the surrealism of the show at The Hague, it is difficult to take the proceedings seriously. How can we be expected to believe that such an evil, crude and disgusting lie can actually have any impact on our lives? But of course it does impact us.

The International Court of Justice will no doubt soon hand down an opinion saying that Israel is wrong to defend itself against the wanton murder of its citizens, killed for the crime of being Jews.

In the aftermath of the ICJ's expected opinion, Israel will come under ever-increasing international pressure to allow in foreign troops who will be tasked with protecting our murderers from our defenders.

How have we arrived at this point? How is it that after three and a half years of absorbing massacre after massacre that Israel now finds itself on trial?

The answer to this question is found in part in the latest State Department Human Rights Report.

Released Wednesday, the report finds both Israel and the Palestinian Authority guilty of countless human rights abuses. Of course, it is balanced.

Of course, it duly notes that the PA security services have themselves conducted terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Yet aside from condemning every action Israel has taken to combat terrorism and thereby equating actions aimed at protecting Israeli citizens with terrorism, the report does something even more offensive.

The report very sensitively gives the names of a dozen or so Palestinian children who died during Israeli assaults against Palestinian terrorists who used these children for cover.

Yet, grotesquely, while the names of Palestinian children are listed, the report provides not one name of any Israeli victim of Palestinian terrorism. Not the Ohayon children, not 14-year-old Abigail Litle -- an American citizen -- who was murdered on a bus on her way home from school and not the names of hundreds of other Israeli men, women and children who were murdered last year.

By naming Palestinian victims while not giving names of Israeli victims, the State Department report follows in the path of the general climate that has gripped us for the past 40 months. This general climate is characterized by the dehumanization of Israelis and Jews by the international community.

This dehumanization prevents anyone from ever seeing the victimization of Israelis. By balancing condemnations of Palestinian terrorism with condemnations of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, our critics, even those among us, are cheapening the value of our lives.

By arguing that Israel abuses human rights when it defends itself against an enemy which has declared its aim as genocide, the State Department, like the UN, the EU, the foreign media and international human rights organizations, is creating a false reality where Israel is not fighting a war against an enemy bent on its physical destruction. Rather, Israel is simply being mean.

As if the perfidy of its human rights report wasn't enough of a jolt for us, the next day the State Department also saw fit to criticize the IDF operation Wednesday in Ramallah where our forces seized some NIS 40 million in terror funds. Dali himself would have been impressed with State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher when he claimed that the operations were "destabilizing to the Palestinian banking system" given the fact that the PA itself uses its banking system to transfer funds to terrorists.

Unfortunately, the surrealism of our current plight doesn't end at The Hague or at the State Department. And it doesn't begin there either. It begins here, in Israel.

As the terror victims marched in front of the Hague to defend Israel's right to build the security fence, Shin Bet director Avi Dichter was at the Knesset explaining that the fence we care so deeply about will not long protect us. Dichter said on Tuesday that the Palestinians are now seeking to upgrade their arsenals in order to carry out attacks that will render the fence irrelevant. Both the PA security forces and the terrorist cells, Dichter said, are improving their artillery capabilities in order to launch shells over the fence. In addition, they are seeking to attain chemical weapons.

And then there is the terror financing. Our forces went to the banks in Ramallah on Wednesday to dry up terrorist bank accounts and this is all for the good. But our government is the main financier of the terrorists.

Israel transfers some NIS 130 million to the PA in tax revenues every month arguing that the money isn't going to terrorists. Yet we know that PA budgetary funds finance terror. Dichter himself acknowledged that ten percent of the PA budget is transferred to Arafat's office. And Arafat, he said, is directly involved in financing terrorism.

And the surrealism doesn't end here either. Last week Ma'ariv reported that to date, security forces have prevented nine attempts by Palestinians to take down jetliners taking off or landing at Ben Gurion Airport. Israel has argued strenuously before the Bush Administration that to protect the flights from rocket and missile attacks it is necessary to construct the security fence far enough away from the airport to keep it out of rocket and artillery range. This involves extending the fence several kilometers north and east of the 1949 armistice lines. It seems to make sense. And yet, The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "appears ready to abandon a proposed second fence around Ben-Gurion Airport."

Then there is Sharon's newest emissary to Washington – not Dov Weisglass or Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom – but Labor head MK Shimon Peres. At the beginning of the week, Peres, fresh from a political powwow with Sharon, turned up in Washington for talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Addressing a gathering of Washington peaceniks later, Peres said Monday that Israel has no moral right to Judea and Samaria. In his words, transferring one hundred percent of Judea, Samaria and Gaza to the Palestinians, "is not a political decision, it is a moral decision."

So here then we have it from none other than the head of the loyal opposition and the man who Sharon apparently now sees as a possible coalition partner if the National Union and the NRP bolt his government. In the analysis of Peres, all of Israel's detractors are right. It is immoral for us to be defending ourselves. It is immoral for us to stake our claim to territory against the Palestinian claims. It is immoral for us to refuse to finance a PA that is so immersed in terror there is no way to give it money it without contributing to the finance of our own murder.

It isn't the security fence that stood for trial this week at the Hague. It is Israel's very legitimacy that now stands before an international tribunal. So at the end of the day it doesn't matter that the fence will not defend us. It doesn't matter that we get criticized for seizing terrorist funds that we ourselves are providing.

What matters is that we ourselves contribute through our apologetics for our need to defend ourselves to the dehumanization of our people and the cheapening of our lives.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Are there good terrorists? Apparently the Bush administration thinks there are.

Deputy US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, the National Security Council's Middle East Affairs director Elliott Abrams and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns reportedly presented such a message during their visit to Jerusalem this week. The three came on a fact-finding mission to hear about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

According to Channel 2, they told Sharon's bureau chief Dov Weisglass Wednesday that the US would only back a unilateral Israeli pullout of Gaza if it could be ensured that former Gaza security chief Muhammad Dahlan would take charge of the area in order to avert a Hamas takeover of Gaza. Additionally, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom explained Wednesday that the US would not back the Gaza withdrawal if the Israelis now living in Gaza were to elect to move to communities in Judea and Samaria after being thrown out of their homes or if Israel were to annex areas of Judea and Samaria.

In short then, the US policy as presently constituted amounts to a view that Israeli actions in Gaza must under all circumstances accrue to the benefit of the PLO regime in the territories.

But is the PLO really better than Hamas? Does strengthening its hold on power actually bring us closer to a peaceful Palestinian society dedicated to democracy and peaceful coexistence with Israel?

Our experience with the PLO since it formed the Palestinian Authority in 1994 shows that viewing it as a rational alternative to Hamas and other Islamist organizations is both unwarranted and counterproductive.

Since entering Gaza in 1994, the PLO leadership under Yassir Arafat set up working relationships with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Its agreement with Hamas, negotiated and concluded in Cairo in November 1994, set up a division of labor between Hamas and the PLO. Hamas agreed not to work to overthrow Arafat's regime and not to publicly embarrass Arafat or the PLO by carrying out terrorism in areas that Israel transferred to PLO control. The PLO agreed to enable Hamas to continue its terrorist attacks elsewhere and to maintain its military capabilities in personnel and weaponry.

The man that Arafat appointed to carry out the PLO's dialogue with Hamas was Muhammed Dahlan. In the 1980s Dahlan had developed a close relationship with senior Hamas operative Muhammed Deif, with whom he shared an Israeli prison cell. Senior IDF sources and international diplomatic sources said in March 1996 that Dahlan was personally responsible for sheltering Deif from Israeli security forces after Deif masterminded Hamas's eight-day suicide bombing campaign in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv and Ashkelon. Those attacks killed sixty Israelis and wounded 130 in late February and early March of that year.

Since the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000, Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror cells operating on Dahlan's turf in Gaza have been overtly cooperating in launching attacks. Dahlan's own Preventive Security Service carried out the November 2000 attack on the school bus from Kfar Darom. Two adults were murdered and five children were seriously wounded.

The same month, Dahlan's men infiltrated Kfar Darom and killed two IDF soldiers who were guarding the community's greenhouses. Dahlan's deputy, Rashid Abu Shbak, who replaced him as head of the militia, is wanted by Israel for his personal involvement in terrorist attacks that have led to the murder of Israelis.

Dahlan's main attraction is his diplomatic skill. He seduced Israeli negotiators during the Oslo years with his fluent if crass Hebrew, which he picked up in prison. His reputation as a tough security boss has impressed Americans and Israelis alike who have been willing for years to overlook not only his personal links to Hamas and to violent attacks against Israeli targets by his own men, but also his mafia-style rule in Gaza.

From 1994 until the start of the war, all Palestinian businessmen who wished to transport goods out of Gaza were forced to pay "license fees" to Dahlan as were all Palestinian laborers who wished to receive permits to work in Israel. Dahlan, together with Arafat's economic advisor Muhammed Rashid and wife Suha Arafat, were the owners of the petroleum and cement monopolies in Gaza and received kickbacks for every shipment of raw materials transported through the Karni cargo terminal, construction of which Dahlan and Rashid oversaw in 1995.

Yet so remarkable is Dahlan's diplomatic charm that he managed to impress US President George W. Bush when he met with him at the Taba summit last June. At the time, Bush singled out Dahlan, then PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's security chief, as a man who could be counted on to fulfill the PA's commitment to destroy terrorist organizations. Of course, Dahlan did nothing.

In many ways, Dahlan is a Palestinian version of Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf, who touts himself as a pro-Western dictator with democratic affinities, has carved out a niche for himself in the US war against terrorism as the only force keeping Pakistan from deteriorating into a nuclear-armed Islamic theocracy.

During a strategic dialogue in Herzliya this week between current and former Indian, Israeli and American policymakers, retired Indian generals and intelligence chiefs railed against Washington's insistence on backing Musharraf in spite of his regime's protection of Al Qaida and other Islamic terror groups fighting against India in Kashmir.

"The Americans believe Musharraf's line that he is the only force that can stop the Islamists, but in fact he backs them. And it is not true that there is no one else who can lead Pakistan. There are secular politicians and parties who are already part of the political scene which Musharraf has worked to decimate with his military coup," says former Indian military intelligence chief, retired Gen. R.K. Sawhney.

The truth is that Pakistani nuclear proliferation to Iran, North Korea and Libya, like the Pakistani support for Al Qaida and the Taliban whose commanders fled to Pakistan during the US invasion of Afghanistan and continue to operate from its territory, would have taken place if Pakistan were under the leadership of Islamist forces. That is, none of the terrorism or weapons of mass destruction proliferation that the US is now fighting a global war against was prevented or necessarily mitigated by the fact that Musharraf rather than a Pakistani Khomeini is in power.

Men like Musharraf and Dahlan are not secular counter-forces to Islamic jihad. They are secular fig leafs which serve to cover a larger reality of Islamic terror. What differentiates the PLO from Hamas is not its ambitions or ties to global terror groups, which both movements have in abundance, but rather the mere fact that on the one hand Hamas is better at terrorism than the PLO and on the other the PLO is better at diplomacy than Hamas.

For his part, Musharraf buys US support by rounding up just enough high-profile terrorists to make the US believe he is worth supporting while placating and strengthening the Pakistani jihadists on whose support he relies. Like Dahlan, Musharraf makes public statements about the need to fight terrorism and then assists the terrorists themselves by providing them with diplomatic cover to continue military operations and jihad indoctrination networks of schools, mosques and media outlets.

If Hamas were to take over Gaza tomorrow, Israel's security situation would be little different than it is today. The same joint Fatah, Hamas, Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad terror cells would continue to operate. While international donor money would perhaps be curtailed, Hamas has shown that it does not lack for financial backers in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Lebanon as well as Europe and North America who would continue to finance its operations.

If Musharraf's regime were to fall, no doubt the US would not follow through on Bush's promised $3 billion military and civilian aid package. But money and assistance from Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea and Iran would no doubt continue to flow.

The US has its reasons for not taking action against the likes of Dahlan and Musharraf and the corrupt jihad backed regimes they represent. In the case of Pakistan, the US fears the Pakistani nuclear capabilities. In the case of the Palestinians, the US believes it has nothing to gain from a clash with the EU, which views the establishment of a Palestinian state as the main anchor of its foreign policy, or with the Arab world, which uses US support of Israel to justify its hatred of America.

But there is a significant difference between not acting against rogue regimes for tactical reasons and backing them based on false strategic assumptions. The false yet prevailing view in Washington is that the PA and the Pakistani military dictatorship are not rogue regimes but rather imperfect allies.

The truth of course is quite the contrary. The Palestinian terrorist organizations sheltered and abetted by the PA like the Al Qaida-linked groups sheltered and abetted by Pakistan together comprise central planks of the global jihad nexus that the US is now leading a global war to defeat.

For Washington to maintain forward momentum in the war it needs to recognize both regimes as the enemies they are. The first step towards such recognition is adopting a policy of indifference regarding these regimes' longevity. At the end of the day, if the US and its allies are to win the war, it must be understood that there is no such thing as a good terrorist.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post

Hamas has joined the big leagues. No longer can it be seen as a local terror group that concentrates its efforts on destroying Israel. According to testimony given last week to the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee by Lt. General Peter Pace, the deputy chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hamas has joined Hizbullah and Al-Qaida in the Triple Frontier Zone in Latin America where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge. There the Islamic terror groups train recruits, gather intelligence on targets for attacks, launder money and sell drugs.

Hamas is usually viewed as a local phenomenon. When in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks President George W. Bush announced that the US war on terror would target "every terrorist group of global reach" it was generally assumed this meant Palestinian terror groups were off the target list.

These organizations were seen as distinct from groups such as Al-Qaida, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abu Sayyaf or Ansar al Islam that attacked mainly non-Israeli targets. By so distinguishing Palestinian terror organizations the Americans have, to date, been able to view the terror war against Israel as categorically distinct from the world jihad against the US and other western countries.

This distinction never made much sense. The fact that Islamic charities such as the Holyland Foundation, which were shut down in the US in the aftermath of September 11, funded both Al Qaida and Hamas made it clear that separating their operations was at best a dubious enterprise.

Consistent Palestinian public support for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden – evidenced by opinion polls, the official PA media and public demonstrations – also gave the lie to the notion that the Palestinian terror war is in a class by itself.

But if in the past the distinction was difficult to justify, it became downright untenable in the wake of the murder of three US officials in Gaza last October. It is not simply that Palestinian terrorists targeted American officials. Nor is it just that the attack has been followed up by an official PA cover-up of the affair. The fact is that official PA media in the weeks preceding the attack conducted targeted incitement against the officials who were murdered.

As shown by Palestinian Media Watch, an independent organization which monitors the official PA media, on September 22, 2003, the PA daily Al Quds reported on the rejection by Palestinian NGOs of a USAID demand that they sign a commitment not to transfer USAID donations to terror groups or operatives. Further down on the same page of the paper was a USAID advertisement calling on Palestinians to apply for US government-funded scholarships to study at American universities. The US officials who were murdered three weeks later in Gaza had arrived in the area to interview Palestinian applicants for congressionally funded Fulbright scholarships.

This week US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer decried the PA show trial of four men it claims were behind the October attack.

The trial, which was conducted behind closed doors last Saturday, came in the wake of a US decision to offer a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the attack. Kurtzer said Monday that not only does the US consider the trial proceedings unacceptable; it also finds the charges inexplicable.

"We're not even sure that the charge sheet that has been put together reflects the gravity of the crime. The charges seem to implicate these individuals for involuntary manslaughter rather than what we would call first-degree murder," Kurtzer admonished.

US anger at the PA is well-founded. Kurtzer is known for his strong affinity with the Israeli peace camp. And yet, given the mountain of evidence of PA involvement in terrorism, he could not avoid concluding that "The road map failed because of terrorism. It failed because Palestinians had not only not done enough to stop terrorism and had not done enough to uproot the terrorist infrastructure, but in the wake of the terrorism directed against Israeli citizens... , the Palestinians did nothing."

Even the EU is no longer finding it possible to ignore PA involvement in terrorism. At the beginning of the week the Berlin Morgenpost newspaper published the results of an investigation by the EU's fraud investigations unit OLAF into the misuse of EU funds by the PA. The investigation, which was prevented for years by the EU's external relations Commissioner Chris Patten, went forward only after EU parliamentarian Francois Zimmeray collected the signatures of 157 EU parliamentarians overriding Patten's authority. The investigators were in Israel two weeks ago to check IMF allegations that $1.1 billion dollars of the EU's aid to the PA was illegally diverted.

According to the Morgenpost, OLAF investigators found that Yasser Arafat has diverted a large portion of the EU's assistance to the Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigade terror cells and to other Palestinian officials.

And yet, in spite of the fact that Hamas is clearly operating on a global level and in spite of the fact that the PA has been exposed for what it is, the US, like the EU, refuses to recognize the Palestinian war against Israel as an integral part of the world terror war that the US is fighting against.

In the same speech on Monday, Kurtzer said of the security fence, "If Israel makes a decision that the security fence is an important adjunct to its security then the United States will support that. However, if decisions on the routing of the fence are taken for reasons that have less to do with security and more to do with politics then we will have problems with it."

The question is, why does the US still insist that Israel cannot take any actions that will break the deadlock in the Palestinian war? Why is it that the US will not back Israeli actions that would bring it a political and military victory against the PA?

The answer was made clear this week. Led by Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday the OPEC oil cartel announced that it was cutting back oil production by one million barrels a day starting in April and would immediately eliminate the 1.6 million barrels a day of excess production over its standing quotas.

Reacting to the announcement, US Secretary of Treasury John Snow said that "higher energy prices act like a tax and are certainly not welcome."

In response to Snow's remarks, Reuters reported that the Saudi daily al-Riyadh shot back "saying that that the US has no right to warn OPEC against cutting oil output and accusing Washington of waging war on the cartel under the guise of protecting the global economy."

Were the US to acknowledge that the Palestinian war against Israel is in fact an integral part of the global jihad against the West, it would find itself in open hostilities with Saudi Arabia which, with a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves, has the power to seriously damage the global economic recovery. And yet, the Saudis, who are the largest backers of Sunni terrorists like Al Qaida and Hamas, are in fact the enemy of the US.

America's dependence on foreign sources of oil has brought about the unprecedented situation where it is engaged in a world war against an enemy it is partly dependent on. Imagine what World War II would have looked like if Adolph Hitler had controlled the world steel markets.

And so it is that the US finds itself pursuing its current policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. The fact of the matter is that Israel is one of the US's staunchest and most valuable allies in the global war against terrorism. And yet, the US has expended great efforts to ensure that Israel brought none of its abilities to bear at least openly in the US war against terror to date.

While the US media is filled with reports about the overextension of US forces worldwide, the Bush administration not only makes no use of Israel's capabilities, but it places stringent limitations on Israel's ability to carry out operations in its own defense.

In the run-up to the November presidential elections, the Bush White House finds itself on the defensive for its actions in the war on terror. Perhaps America's reluctance to articulate clearly who its enemies and allies really are is one of the main reasons it is losing control of the debate on the war as a whole.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Thursday afternoon the Shin Bet released information regarding operational planning by Islamic Jihad aimed at launching terrorist attacks against Israeli targets from fishing rafts in Gaza.

The Iranian-backed group had $500,000 allocated to the plan which involved the purchase of motorized fishing rafts from which it would conduct shooting and grenade attacks against Israeli civilian targets and military installations along the coastline.

The group enlisted the assistance of Gaza fisherman Iyad Alwan to train and outfit the terrorists who would act under the cover of normal fishing activities off the Gaza coast. The plot was exposed when Israeli forces arrested Aluwan in Gaza.

Now that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has embraced the Labor party's platform of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, it is necessary to ask, how could Israeli forces have possibly thwarted this plot if they weren't operating in the Gaza Strip?

Sharon's newest plan to remove all Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip is rife with troubling moral and ideological dimensions. As is the case in Judea and Samaria, Jewish settlement in Gaza dates back to biblical times. Kfar Darom, perhaps the most demonized settlement in Gaza was originally founded before the establishment of Israel. The community fell to Egyptian forces in 1948 after a prolonged siege. Like the settlements in Gush Etzion in Judea which were ethnically cleansed and razed by the British commanded Arab Legion in the War of Independence, Kfar Darom was reestablished after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day War.

The notion that Jews should be forced out of their homes and communities anywhere in the world is offensive. The notion that the Jewish state would order the forced transfer and destruction of Jewish communities is uniquely appalling. Yet, the moral, ideological and spiritual dimensions of Sharon's latest plan are aspects that can be discussed elsewhere. In our post-moral, anti-ideological culture, such considerations are considered passe, somehow beyond the pale of reasoned debate by educated, cultured people.

So putting these issues aside, there are other no less troubling implications of Sharon's plan to pull out of Gaza. These implications span from the tactical to the strategic to the diplomatic spheres of Israel's struggle against its enemies.

Opponents of the Jewish communities in Gaza often point to the large force structure deployed for their protection. "It takes an entire battalion to defend Netzarim," is one of the most frequent statements to this effect.

A senior IDF commander pointed out to me this week that this oft-repeated statement ignores the larger picture. "Our forces in the settlements don't just guard homes. We use the settlements as forward bases to combat terrorists. If we didn't have the settlements, we would have to form them ourselves."

"In Operation Defensive Shield," he continues, "if we didn't have the so called ideological settlement of Bracha by Nablus, it would have taken us four days to enter the city to commence operations, fighting all the way. Because we had Bracha, we were able to enter Nablus quickly and easily. The same is true of our operations in Gaza."

The fact that Palestinian forces in Gaza have to operate in secret is a result of IDF forward deployment in and around the settlements, he explains. And the security situation in Gaza is vexing. Since the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war, 57 percent of all terror attacks have emanated from the Gaza Strip. The most popular and strongest group in the area is Hamas.
Military sources have warned in recent weeks and months that Hamas is poised to take over the entire area from the PLO.

And yet, Palestinian and military sources admit that in Gaza, the distinctions between the various terror cells have long ceased to be operationally significant. Since the beginning of the war, Fatah terror cells have been openly operating with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and PA security services have provided support structures for these cells as well as taken part in their operations.

From a tactical perspective, an Israeli retreat from Gaza would provide safe havens for all these forces. Gaza would become a carbon copy of South Lebanon.

A reminder of this fact is to be found in the Palestinian preparations for the war in 2000. In the months before Arafat launched hostilities in September, Palestinian forces in Gaza conducted six battalion level exercises. In these exercises they simulated urban warfare operations; attacks on Israeli settlements and military installations; seizure of land and combined infantry-armored offensives using the armored personnel carriers they had received as part of the Oslo accords.

These exercises were a marked escalation of their regular training regimens. Until 2000, these training regimens rarely went above the company level.

Today, with IDF forces stationed in Gaza choke points, such full-scale exercises are inconceivable. But if the IDF were to leave Gaza and take the settlements with it, these exercises would become a daily occurrence. So, from the tactical perspective of the IDF's daily grind to disrupt and destroy terror cells, a withdrawal from Gaza would be a windfall for the terrorists operating inside the territory.

Proponents of a pullout from Gaza have often argued that Gaza has no strategic value to Israel.

They point to the geographical isolation of the area and explain that in contrast to Judea and Samaria, Gaza can be hermetically sealed off. If we leave, so the thinking goes, we can lock the door and throw away the key.

By every possible measure, Gaza is a burden. With arguably the highest birthrate in the world, half of the population of 1.2 million is under the age of 15. These youngsters have been indoctrinated to work for the destruction of Israel through jihad by the PA since they were babies. Gaza has no natural resources to point to. Sixty percent of the population is impoverished. Why should Israel be there?

In 2002, Sharon himself provided the answer. He declared, "Netzarim is the same as Negba and Tel Aviv. Evacuating Netzarim will only encourage terrorism and increase the pressure upon us."

Speaking on a related topic, US President George W. Bush said Wednesday, "America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins. We will do what it takes. We will not leave until the job is done." Bush was, of course, speaking of the US-led occupation of Iraq. In the post-September 11 world, the US has learned the lessons of earlier American retreats from Somalia and Lebanon. Today it is clear that once US forces have been engaged in an area, that spot, be it Baghdad or Mogadishu becomes strategically important to US national security interests. Cutting and running is not an option when one's enemies take any retreat as a sign of strategic decline and military weakness.

So while Gaza could conceivably be hermetically sealed, although only at great economic and political cost, the effects of such a move on Israel's strategic posture would be devastating. Proving this point, Fatah terrorists told Ma'ariv on Wednesday, "Sharon refers to this as a withdrawal. We call it a capitulation. He wouldn't retreat of his own free will. This decision was made because of the will of the Palestinian people."

A reasonable strategic argument for withdrawing from Gaza could be made if the retreat was coupled with an Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion, the Ma'aleh Adumim block and Western Samaria. If Israel were to concede Gaza while exacting irrevocable payment for the withdrawal in more strategically vital areas, it would be impossible for the Palestinians to view the withdrawal as a victory. And yet, there has been next to no discussion of such a plan.

For his part, Sharon has argued that the urgency of the withdrawal stems from increased international pressure to impose a settlement on Israel. Such a "settlement" would involve a full Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria as well. So in announcing his intention to retreat in Gaza, Sharon argues that he is heading off an even more devastating strategic retreat.

Yet from the international reactions to Sharon's plan, there is little reason to think that this is in fact the case. On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "Removing settlements can help us move down the road towards the vision [of two-states] but it can't be seen in isolation...from other steps on settlements and other steps... that both parties need to take to achieve a negotiated solution."

For his part, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also sees Sharon's plan as one that will be taken in the context of additional Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria. In his words it "should be seen as a first step because withdrawal from the West Bank will also be required." And so, as the immediate international reactions to Sharon's plan make clear, a withdrawal from Gaza will not stem the tide of demands on Israel to vacate Judea and Samaria as well. To the contrary, it will signal Israeli willingness to do so.

It is hard to understand what happened to make Sharon ignore the dangerous consequences of his plan to withdraw from Gaza. Quite simply, it makes no sense. But it is the responsibility of his cabinet ministers to remind him of these consequences and to make it clear to the prime minister that he ignores these ramifications at the peril not only of his political future, but at the peril of the security of the state.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.