Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the cabinet Sunday morning that last week Palestinian security forces smuggled SA-7 Strella anti-aircraft missiles into Gaza from Egypt. These missiles are capable of shooting down commercial airliners and military aircraft.

Mofaz said that the introduction of these missiles to the Palestinian arsenal crossed "a red line," and warned, "If the Palestinians don't get a hold of the Strellas, we will."

This warning naturally begs the question: Which Palestinians are supposed to "get a hold" of the missiles? The Palestinian security forces that (presumably with Egyptian assistance) brought them into Gaza? Maybe Mofaz thinks that democratically elected PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas – who divides his time fairly equally between coddling terrorists, lobbying Arab leaders not to end their state of war with the Jewish state, and telling Israel, the Americans and the Europeans how "moderate" he is – will "get a hold" of them. Perhaps the wanted terrorists whom Israel has agreed not to try to kill or arrest will "get a hold" of them. But, then again, those wanted terrorists might be the same Palestinian security service members who brought them into Gaza in the first place since Abbas has been actively recruiting them into his "reformed" security services.

Back in January Shin Bet Director Avi Dichter told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that if Israel relinquishes control over the Philadelphi Corridor, which links Gaza to the Sinai to the Palestinians, the current "trickle" of arms coming through will turn into a "river." Yet, in a nod to the "cease-fire" Abbas announced he had reached with his terrorists, Israel enabled Palestinian security forces to deploy in Gaza, including in Rafah adjacent to the Philadelphi Corridor. Since then, in a series of photo-ops, the Palestinians have proudly displayed the smuggling tunnels they uncovered. And now we know that in addition to uncovering tunnels, they have been digging them.

But this apparently means little to Mofaz. In his recent visit with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak he let it be known that Israel is planning to relinquish control over the Philadelphi Corridor to the Palestinians and Egyptians. And now Mofaz is expecting that the PA will "get a hold" of the Strella rockets it already holds.

If the threat such missiles posed to Israel wasn't so tangible, this entire story would be a Vaudevillian farce. But then, this really shouldn't interest us. After all, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon doesn't seem to care.

What is really getting his goat these days is not the specter of Palestinian terrorists/reformed security services blowing up jetliners taking off or landing at Ben Gurion Airport. What Sharon is enraged about at the moment is that someone had the nerve to leak the protocol of US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer's lecture to Foreign Ministry cadets to Yediot Ahronot. The protocol has Kurtzer telling the new Israeli diplomats that in spite of the line Sharon has been selling the public since his visit to the White House last April, the Bush administration never agreed that in a final peace accord with the PLO, Israel would have US support for retaining any Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

"Whoever leaked Kurtzer's remarks to the press prepared a strategic attack against Sharon," Sharon's confidantes told Yediot over the weekend. And now the burning question is, who has it in, not for the Israeli public – who now have to worry that anytime they step onto a plane they are liable to be blown to smithereens like so many patrons in a Jerusalem cafe – but for the prime minister.

The silliest thing about the uproar over Kurtzer's reported remarks is that they didn't actually contain any new information. The famed letter Sharon received from US President George W. Bush at that meeting included no American support for the retention of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. All Bush wrote was, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."

And this means absolutely nothing. It is not a promise. It is not a position. It is simply a description of reality.

Bush's letter marked a continuation – not a change – of the US policy regarding Judea and Samaria. Since 1967 American policy has been that Israel's borders will be determined in negotiations with its neighbors and that until such negotiations are completed, the only changes in the status quo the Americans will support are changes that work to the benefit of the Arabs. Hence, for instance, Washington has never launched a protest against Palestinian land grabs around Jerusalem.

The only side that changed its policies in the aftermath of Sharon's visit to the White House was Israel. At that meeting, and in a subsequent letter from Sharon's bureau chief Dov Weisglass to Condoleezza Rice, Sharon agreed (without the approval of his government) to give the US a veto over all Israeli building activities in Judea and Samaria. As Rice's rebuke of Israel over the weekend for the government's intention to expand Ma'aleh Adumim shows, the US vetoes all Israeli building in the areas. So in Washington last April, far from receiving US support for Israeli retention of communities in Judea and Samaria, Sharon accepted the US position that Israel has no right to build them.

Now Sharon is trying to backtrack from his previous lies. At the cabinet meeting on Sunday he admitted, as if stating the obvious, "We can't expect to receive explicit American agreement to build freely in the settlements."

Sunday night, IDF forces arrested a group of Islamic Jihad terrorists who were building Kassam rockets in Jenin. The whole district of Jenin is slated to be emptied of all Israeli presence in the summer as part of the withdrawal plan.

What we see here is a breakdown of Israel's strategic rationality. Sharon, who has made a career out of tactical victories, has lost sight of the significance of strategic realities. It is hard to know what, if any, externalities can force a change in his outlook. But it is clear enough that something has to give.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Speaking Tuesday to the congressionally mandated commission charged with investigating the policy failures that led to September 11, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said, "I do think, in all fairness, that 9/11 was a cataclysmic event that changed things."

Albright's statement tells the whole story. There was a world before 9/11. And there was a world after the 9/11. They are not the same world.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld concurred with Albright's assessment when he said, "Imagine that we were back before Sept. 11 and that a US president had looked at the information then available, gone before the Congress and the world and said, 'We need to invade Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and destroy the Al Qaida terrorist network.' Based on what little was known before Sept. 11, how many countries would have joined? Many? Any? Not likely."

The commission's hearings this week dwarfed all other news in the US. Even the IDF's successful strike against Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin was sidelined by the media's attention to the public accounting by top officials from the Clinton and Bush administrations for the decisions they made and did not make.

Commission members grilled these officials as to why they did not send in troops to attack Al Qaida and overthrow the Taliban before Sept. 11. Why did they not respond to the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole in Yemen? Why had they not killed Osama Bin Laden after the Al Qaida attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998? Why had they not armed Predator unmanned aerial vehicles to kill Bin Laden in 1999? Why had they not intercepted the flight that took bin Laden and his top lieutenants from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996?

Again and again, officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations explained they did not believe it was reasonable or possible to take military action and, besides, they were trying to act in other ways. The Clinton administration attempted to engage the Taliban. They sent top diplomats to Afghanistan to meet with Taliban officials. Taliban officials were brought to Washington to discuss Al Qaida. Attempts were made to encourage the Saudis and the Pakistanis to pressure the Taliban to cease support for Al Qaida.

At the end of the day, it all goes back to the same thing. There was a reality before Sept. 11 and there was a reality after Sept. 11. And they are not the same.

Much of the attention paid to the commission's hearings revolves around charges of politicization. There is clearly much of that. The commission has an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats grill Bush officials aggressively and are relatively mild toward Clinton officials and the Republicans take just the opposite approach.

Yet, in spite of their conflicting party loyalties, commission members are unanimous in their view that the US is at war against Islamic terrorism. So united, the message that emanates from their questioning is that they are all Americans first and foremost and as Americans they wish to work together to learn from past mistakes in order to prevent future attacks against the US and its interests around the world.

Perhaps the main reason that the hearings did not descend into partisan finger-pointing is because after Sept. 11 both sides of the political divide in America understood the new reality. The Bush administration stopped accepting excuses for the Taliban and instead brought down the regime by force. It then invaded Iraq and took down the enemy regime of Saddam Hussein. Congress authorized use of military force to combat terrorists and their state sponsors, passed the Patriot Act and created the new Department of Homeland Security.

Today, all relevant US government resources are being used, both domestically and internationally, to combat terrorism and to help and indeed force other countries to combat terrorism. Rather than hunkering down behind its oceanic barriers, US forces operate from the Philippines to Uzbekistan. US diplomats engage, cajole and threaten foreign leaders around the world to take action against terror cells. And while actively remaking Iraqi society, the US is laying the groundwork for more concerted action against Syria and Iran.
 

Osama bin Laden, while an important target, is no longer considered a singular problem by anyone. As Albright put it, "Al Qaida is not a criminal gang that can simply be rounded up and put behind bars. It is the center of an ideological virus that has wholly perverted the minds of thousands and distorted the thinking of millions more. Until the right medicine is found, the virus will continue to spread."

As an Israeli watching the proceedings, I was struck by all of this. I was impressed by what appeared to be an honest reckoning by top US policy makers with what they did and did not accomplish. I was struck by the commissioners' questions. They were intelligent if sometimes belligerent. They were well thought out and stemmed from a clear recognition that the US is at war and must win.

I was equally struck with the sense that Israel, in contending with the Palestinian terror war, is still, after three and a half years, on pre-war footing. Rather than marshalling our military and diplomatic resources to root out terrorists who threaten us wherever they are, we engage in an endless policy of containment geared toward enabling an ultimate Israeli retreat.

On Monday the IDF finally killed Hamas terror chieftain Ahmed Yassin. In commenting on the hit, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Yassin was "the Osama bin Laden of the Palestinian people." No doubt there is much truth to this statement. But what about Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Mullah Omar? What about the Palestinian Taliban, the Palestinian Authority?

Before Sept. 11, the Taliban told the Americans and their interlocutors that they had no control over bin Laden and that anyway, he was not a threat to the US. Sanctions on the Taliban, although leveled, were ineffective because the Pakistanis continued to arm them and supply them with oil, the United Arab Emirates allowed them to bank and travel abroad and the Saudis continued to finance them. On Sept. 12, 2001, American tolerance for this state of affairs was over.

Yet here in Israel it seems that our tolerance will never run out. We continue to distinguish Hamas from the PA even as PA security forces participate in Hamas attacks and carry them out themselves. We willingly finance the PA even though we know that they use their money to finance terrorists, run schools where children are taught to murder, and indeed build an entire society around the cause of our destruction.

We talk about engaging the PA in negotiations when its leaders embrace Yassin and condemn us for killing him. We speak of easing restrictions on Palestinian travel at roadblocks when Fatah entices prepubescent children to commit suicide while committing murder at roadblocks with promises of virgins in heaven. We speak of "containing" terrorism, when the Palestinians openly declare that their aim is the genocide of Jews and call on the entire Arab and Muslim world to join their fight against us.

As I watched the commission hearings, I tried to imagine similar hearings taking place in Israel. It was impossible. Here we have all the stars of Oslo, from Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin to Amnon Lipkin Shahak and Ami Ayalon still insisting after three and a half years that they were right and reality is wrong.

We have Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insisting that no concessions will be made in fighting terrorism at the same time that he insists on handing more territory over to terrorists and refuses to order the IDF to bring the sum total of its abilities to bear in destroying the Palestinians' ability to cause us harm.

No battle of ideas has been waged to capture Palestinian hearts and minds by our intellectual elites who still embrace Oslo and think that we are to blame for our mass murder. No sustained initiative to stop international support for the PA has been waged by our diplomats who still insist that at some future date we will wish to negotiate with our Taliban and give them sovereignty.

Describing this state of affairs this week, IDF CGS Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said, "When necessary – mainly following severe terrorist attacks – it is possible to change the nature of the campaign for a specific time period from a low intensity conflict in which the terrorists have a certain advantage, to a high intensity conflict in which it is easier for a regular military force to employ its power . However even such periods do not ensure a decisive victory."

Well of course not. If an offensive is not sustained until the enemy's forces and will to fight are broken, victory will remain elusive and the fight will go on forever.

This week OC Intelligence Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze'evi Farkash dismissed Hamas's threats of heretofore unseen attacks in retaliation for Israel's killing of Yassin. He noted that to date, Hamas has used all its resources to attack Israel and that there was no reason to believe that these resources will fundamentally change in the aftermath of Yassin's death. That is, everyday our terrorist enemies muster all their capabilities to kill Israelis anyway they can.

It has been said that in Israel, everyday is Sept. 11.

The question is, when will our leaders finally take it upon themselves to marshal our resources and move us into a Sept. 12 reality?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

A year ago today I crossed the desert border between Kuwait and Iraq with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

Sitting in the back of a Humvee, I was filled with a sense of both trepidation and expectation as we smiled at a sergeant from the Engineering Corps who stood on a sand dune waving an oversized American flag, ushering us into war.

After the September 11 attacks, after the US-led campaign in Afghanistan, the global war on terrorism was entering a new phase. The Bush Administration understood that victory against the forces of global jihad required a wholesale restructuring of the jihadi societies in the Arab and Muslim world.

It required, too, the identification of weak links in the chain of global terrorism that could be targeted and destroyed. Saddam's Iraq was identified early on as a vital link in this chain. By invading Kuwait in 1990, Iraq had rendered itself the only Arab state viewed as an outlaw by the UN.

While the threat emanating from Iraq justified the attack, the UN Security Council resolutions limiting its sovereignty provided the legal and diplomatic justifications for the war.

The US-led overthrow of Saddam's Ba'athist regime has been more effective in advancing the global war on terrorism than its critics claim. But liberation has also made clear the challenges remaining ahead and has served to identify the weaknesses today inherent in the US war effort.

The first and most obvious advantage of the war is that the US has successfully overthrown a regime that was a strong supporter of global jihad. An Oxford Research International poll released this week shows Iraqi support for terrorism ended with Saddam's regime. The poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis oppose terrorism.

Importantly, the poll demonstrates that the strongest supporters for the US strategy of bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq are the Iraqis themselves.

Eighty-six percent of Iraqis want Iraq to become a democracy. The influence of an Iraqi democracy on the Arab and Muslim world will be immense. The Kurdish riots in Syria that have been going on for the past week are a strong indication of just how powerful a regional influence a democratic Iraq can be. The Iranian regime's attempts to destabilize Iraq and its actions to neutralize and oppress its domestic opponents show also how frightened Iraq's neighbors are of its nascent democracy.

From a military perspective, with its forces in Iraq, the US now has a central base of operations in the Persian Gulf from which US strength can be projected out. The overthrow of Saddam has inarguably augmented US power in the Arab world that now must take seriously threats that would have been discounted as bluster before the invasion.

On the other hand, the US's failure thus far to unravel the puzzle of the Iraqi WMD arsenals remains troubling. While the recent revelations of the corruption in the UN oil-for food program make clear that Saddam was gathering the funds necessary to revamp his military forces after their defeat in the Persian Gulf War, it is unknown what he had at his disposal on the eve of the invasion and where whatever he had is now.

At the same time, Libya's decision to expose its own nuclear program to the US is undoubtedly a result of the US's enhanced strategic posture in the aftermath of the war. But then, Libya's disclosures have served to show that the problem of proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology is more acute and widespread than the US had formerly thought. The depth of Pakistani involvement in both the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs came as a troubling surprise to both the US and the British.

The scope of the threat of nuclear proliferation has made clear two other consequences of the US engagement in Iraq. With the large mass of its combat forces tied down in Iraq for the foreseeable future, the US lacks the forces necessary to launch a campaign against Iran or North Korea today.

These regimes, cognizant of the lack of a US military option against them, are thumbing their noses at the US and moving full speed ahead with their nuclear programs, which they hope will make them immune to US attack.

The war in Iraq also exposed the weaknesses of the US's traditional alliances with Western Europe. These weaknesses were inherent in the alliance which since the end of World War II has been based on European free-riding on US military strength. The NATO member states never contributed significantly to their own defense.

Yet today, while they continue to expect the US to protect them, they no longer feel it necessary to support the US either diplomatically or militarily in its war against global jihad. Given the limitation of the size of the US military, both diplomatic and even symbolic military alliances are vital for the US to deter rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

On the other hand, the war in Iraq has also made clear to the US that it has an alternative set of allies that are not free-riders and that understand the depth of the threat of global jihad to the global order generally and to the well-being of their own nations specifically.

Aside from NATO member nations like Britain, Poland and Italy, Israel, India and Australia have staked their future on the US-led war on terror and are willing to commit their forces to winning the war. Yet in the case of India and Israel, rather than supporting them as allies, the US is pushing both to appease their enemies – the Pakistanis and the Palestinians – that themselves represent key links in the global jihad chain.

In Israel's case, stemming from the US refusal to see Israel as a principal or even secondary ally in the war, the Israeli government is now pursuing a policy of appeasement not only antithetical to what America expects of its European allies, but also counterproductive to the entire war.

An Israeli retreat from Gaza, as the depth of the jihadi network operating in the area becomes more apparent each day, would be disastrous for the US position in the war. It would strengthen the terrorists in Iraq and embolden the Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians and Iranians to continue to defy American demands that they cease their support for terror and their WMD programs.

For President Bush, an embrace of Israel and India would involve the high price of confronting not only America's erstwhile European allies, but also powerful forces within his own administration and party, particularly Secretary of State Colin Powell and former secretary of state James Baker. And yet as he moves into the presidential election, he needs a clear message to voters that will convince them of the need to place national security at the top of their priorities at the ballot box.

The fact of the matter is that the US now leads the global war against a network of Arab and Muslim states and terror groups that together work to destroy the global system led by the US. While the invasion of Iraq took place a year ago, the war itself is only in its opening stages. As the Spanish voters showed last week, much of the world which the US defends still prefers to blame the war on its defender rather than join the fight against its enemies.

The feelings of trepidation and expectation brought on by the US-led invasion of Iraq endure today. The advantages gained from the overthrow of the Ba'athist regime are significant and must be built upon. The obstacles to victory have also been clarified. These include both the withering of America's Cold War alliances and the strength of the global jihad network throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

As the intelligence on the scope of the nuclear programs in the hands of the Iranians and North Koreans becomes clearer, and as the increasing audacity of the jihadis as a result of the Spanish elections shows, the imperative of continuing the fight couldn't be greater.

Given the limitations on the size of the US military, it is clear that America cannot win this war alone. It needs allies willing to fight with it. Luckily, it has such allies. But to embrace its allies, the US must take the step it has yet to take. Bush must explain to the American people who their enemies and friends really are, why new alliances must be forged as old ones are discarded, and why new campaigns must be launched and further sacrifices made.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In the latest orchestrated leak to the press, Thursday Ma'ariv reported the details of the unilateral withdrawal plan drafted for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by his National Security Council. The plan involves the expulsion of Israelis not only from the Gush Katif, Kfar Darom and Netzarim in Gaza, but also from up to 25 additional towns in Judea and Samaria. According to the plan, the towns in Gaza that are set to be vacated will be transferred to an unidentified "somebody."

So now it is clear that the plan that Sharon has so far refused to present to his cabinet is not simply about a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. It is also about a unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. The fact that the prime minister has decided to shorten the security fence by some 170 kilometers to make it more or less coterminous with the 1949 armistice lines is further evidence that what Sharon has in mind is an Israeli surrender of just about all of the disputed territories to "somebody."

The NSC's plan also lists the obvious security vulnerabilities inherent in the unilateral withdrawal. These dangers include "an increase in terror; a disintegration of the Palestinian regime; a Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip; a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories that Israel will be sucked into; an adjustment of terror organizations to the new circumstances with renewal of operations at a raised tempo; and damage to Israeli intelligence capabilities in the aftermath of the withdrawal."

Sharon's political machinations over the past few weeks indicate he is committed to moving forward with this plan regardless of consequences. Again, through orchestrated media leaks, we learned this week that he has already concluded negotiations with Labor Party leader Shimon Peres for Labor, a party resoundingly rejected by the voters in last year's elections, to join his government after he forces the National Union and the NRP to bolt his coalition.

Sharon has also leaked that he is considering bringing Shas into his government, perhaps as a result of a projected breakup of the Likud itself. Sources in the Likud have noted that the anti-withdrawal block already includes the legally required 15 MKs who together can leave the party and form a new parliamentary faction.

While our elected officials have so far received no opportunity to debate or vote on Sharon's plan in the cabinet (and have disgracefully demanded none), Sharon is aggressively promoting it to foreigners, with whose help he plans to push it through his government as a fait accompli. With the enthusiastic backing of our media, Sharon is engaging the Egyptian and US governments in in-depth discussions about the role they will play in implementing his plan.

After his meeting Thursday with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak agreed to amend the limitations placed on Egyptian military deployments in the Sinai by the Camp David Peace Accord and deploy units to the border between Gaza and Egypt. As for Hamas, Mubarak told Israeli reporters that the movement is not his problem. "I don't want to talk about Hamas or any other organization. It's not my business. The Palestinians must bring security. As for Hamas, you created it," Mubarak said.

As for the Bush administration, Sharon hopes that the removal of Jews from up to 25 towns in Judea and Samaria will convince the president and his advisers to accept what former President Bill Clinton proposed in 2000, namely an American acceptance of Israeli civilian presence in Gush Etzion, Ariel and the Adumim bloc communities. Since negotiations are still ongoing, it is unclear whether President Bush will go as far as Clinton would have.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the Sharon plan is how closely it follows the model of the Oslo Accords. Like the current initiative, the Oslo Accord was sold to the Israeli public as a way to withdraw from the hornet's nest of Gaza. The fact that Judea and Samaria were also being given away was aggressively downplayed by both the Rabin-Peres government and the media. Like the current plan, Oslo was negotiated without government or military oversight. Like the current plan, the dangers inherent in Oslo were known before the agreement was signed.

On the other hand, in many respects Oslo was better than what Sharon is currently advocating. In 1993, the government had the luxury of innocence. It can be argued that both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres believed that the PLO was a reasonable partner that would abide by its commitments to live at peace with Israel, combat terrorism and educate Palestinian society to live in peace with the Jewish state. This is not the case today. We already know that we have no credible Palestinian partner.

Oslo also provided us with diplomatic openings to many countries and enhanced Israel's diplomatic standing generally for a time. In the case of the Sharon plan, no such dividend is in the offing. The position of the international community remains that the plan cannot cancel the future need for additional concessions in Judea and Samaria and leaves the issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees on the table.

In addition, Oslo entailed the continued deployment of IDF troops in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It also allowed the retention of an Israeli civilian presence in the territories and placed no restrictions on the right of that Israeli civilian presence to grow and develop freely.

Sharon's program allows for none of these things. The IDF will be redeployed out of Gaza and, it can be assumed, much of Judea and Samaria. We also know that when the Palestinians continue to attack us, the Europeans and the Americans will pressure our government "to exercise restraint" in responding. We know that the Egyptians will take no effective action to curb these assaults and we know that at the UN and other international fora, Israel will be condemned for taking any actions whatsoever to defend our citizenry from terrorist assault emanating from the areas under the control of "somebody."

Aside from the policy parallels to Oslo, Sharon's plan shares an additional similarity to Rabin's gamble. As was the case with Rabin, Sharon has offered his plan at a time when he was under no international pressure whatsoever to do anything of the sort. Rabin moved on Oslo because he wished to shore up his credibility domestically. In the 1992 elections he had promised to achieve an agreement "within a year." The clock was ticking, so he moved. In Sharon's case, he has his legal woes and his sinking numbers in the polls to consider, so he too moves.

The most stunning aspect of this plan is the fact that it is being advanced at the same time as another Middle East peace plan that actually could bring about a long term change for the better in our region. This plan, the Bush administration's Greater Middle East Initiative, involves pressuring Arab dictatorships like Egypt's to democratize. The very existence of the US initiative has already caused shockwaves throughout the Arab world. It is empowering voices of freedom from Damascus to Mecca to Cairo. For the first time, these voices are getting picked up by Western news organizations which for years stood by as they were repressed and silenced.

Iraq this week took the incredible step of ratifying a constitution that will make the country the first Arab democracy ever. The potential repercussions of a stable pro-Western Iraqi democracy on the region are enormous.

And yet, again according to leaks to the press, we learn that Egypt will be paid off by the US for its declared willingness to deploy its military forces along the border. One can only assume that the price that Mubarak will exact is an American pledge not to apply even the slightest pressure on him to free his people from the yoke of his dictatorship.

For decades Likud leaders, from Begin to Shamir to Netanyahu, argued that the only way for Israel to ever live at peace with its neighbors is for these neighbors to become democracies. Since Israel has no power to force such a change, over the years, these leaders were subject to ridicule and calumny. Their belief in democracy was criticized as a tactic to forestall negotiations with the PLO and with the presidents-for-life in Egypt and Syria.

Yet, while Israel has no power to cause our neighbors to choose freedom and democracy, the US has such power. And today, rather than allowing the Bush administration to use this power, Sharon's wooing of Mubarak pulls the rug out from under an initiative that presents the only real chance of bringing peace and security to Israel in a way that can meet both the Arab and the Israeli needs.

Not surprisingly, the US plan was long debated both openly in the US press and behind closed doors. It was publicly launched by the president. The plan's credibility rests on the credibility the US gained in the Arab world as a result of its military victory in Iraq. If successful, it will advance US national security interests in the region by drying up the swamps of extremism that flourish in the darkness of totalitarian regimes. If it fails, the US is no worse off than it is today. That is, the plan is low risk and entails a potentially enormous payoff.

In sharp contrast, Sharon's plan is being advanced despite its high risks and unclear payoffs. It strengthens our enemies among the Palestinians. It enhances Mubarak's regional strength and reputation at the expense of the American sponsored nascent Iraqi democracy. It emboldens the Europeans and it pushes the US into a position where in the interests of "progress" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it will be forced to undermine a plan that can actually bring peace.

And all of this it does while manipulating the Israeli people, through orchestrated leaks and behind the scenes discussions, to accept a government we rejected a year ago and a plan far worse than the one we were bamboozled into accepting 11 years ago.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Imagine the following scenario: In response to threats last summer by Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah to kidnap additional Israelis, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the IDF to strike at Hizbullah rocket launchers along the border, command and control assets in the Bekaa Valley and kill Hizbullah leaders.

After the initial strikes, Sharon announced that the campaign would continue until Nasrallah returned the bodies of murdered IDF soldiers Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawayid and kidnapped Israeli drug dealer Elhanan Tannenbaum.

The IDF continued its operations, killing Hizbullah terrorists and destroying its bases while overflying Syrian military installations in Lebanon and Western Syria and besieging Nasrallah.

Seeing that Israel was pursuing a plan to destroy his organization, Nasrallah returned the bodies and Tannenbaum through German mediators.

In the aftermath of the successful campaign, it was revealed that Sharon had a past relationship with Tannenbaum's father-in-law. Would anyone care?

The furor over Ma'ariv's revelation Wednesday that Sharon had business dealings with Shimon Cohen, Tannenbaum's father-in-law, 30 years ago has little to do with the fact of the matter.

Rather, the reason the story resonates with the public is that it is a metaphor for how ill-conceived Sharon's decision to release more than 400 terrorists in exchange for a criminal was.

The story of the Sharon-Tannenbaum connection, which has dominated the public debate since Wednesday morning, does however serve a practical purpose. It illustrates two central problems with Israeli policymaking.

In the first instance, it demonstrates the vacuousness of the decision-making processes Sharon has adopted since taking office in 2001. These decisions, taken far away from government or public scrutiny, are made by Sharon and a few handpicked advisers without political or public critique and presented to us as a fait accompli.

Secondly, the Sharon-Tannenbaum affair lays bare the media's failure to foster public debate on either Sharon's policymaking mechanisms or the policies themselves before they are adopted. In the case of Sharon's insistence on releasing more than 400 terrorists in exchange for Tannenbaum, for instance, it is the security of all Israelis, not the prime minister's political career, that is the principal casualty of the deal.

Yet the media debate before the prisoner swap was approved by the cabinet was superficial at best. Its loudest criticism related to the deal's impact on securing information on missing IAF navigator Ron Arad. The question of how the deal would impact the security of Israeli citizens writ large was largely ignored.

Today, there are three government policies that are equally if not more vital than the prisoner swap to our national security that are also being carried out in the backrooms with little to no public debate. If we are to take any lessons from the Tannenbaum affair, it is to these issues that they should be applied.

First we have Sharon's intention to deploy Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip after an IDF withdrawal.

According to news reports, Sharon has proposed to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak that the Camp David Accord's security limitations on Egyptian forces along the border with Israel be significantly amended.

Today, the treaty provisions limit Egyptian forces to the western Sinai Peninsula and its forces are barred from deploying near the border with Israel. Sharon now is pushing a plan under which Egypt would deploy thousands of security forces along the border and inside the Gaza Strip. The plan was presented to Mubarak last week by Labor Party leader Shimon Peres.

Speaking this week before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, CGS Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told lawmakers that the IDF's General Staff is totally opposed to the notion of amending the Camp David Accord in this manner. Ya'alon explained that deploying Egyptian forces in the so-called Philadelphia corridor along the divided city of Rafah would enable Katyusha rockets to be smuggled into Gaza and Katyusha strikes on Ashkelon would force the IDF to launch large-scale ground operations in Gaza.

Of Egypt's gestures toward curbing weapon smuggling along the Rafah border to date, Ya'alon said, "I am not satisfied with the Egyptian action."

The plan to deploy the Egyptian military in Gaza represents a total renunciation of Israeli security doctrine for the past 48 years.

Since the 1956 Sinai Campaign, it has been Israel's policy to keep Egyptian forces away from the border. Israel went to war with Egypt in 1956 after Egypt failed to prevent and indeed sponsored terrorist attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip. In 1967, it was the Egyptian military mobilization on the border that fomented regional war.

The entire rationale behind the separation-of-forces sections of the Camp David Accord was to prevent the eruption of war between Israel and Egypt by keeping Egyptian forces away from Gaza and Israeli population centers.

There has been no government discussion whatsoever of this radical proposal. Apparently the brainchild of Sharon, Peres and Sharon's chief of staff Dov Weisglass, the policy was announced through leaks to the media. Sharon has yet to say anything about this proposal to the public although he is already negotiating it with the US and the Egyptians.

And indeed, there has been no public debate of the issue. All three television channels were granted interviews with Sharon on Wednesday night and not one of them asked him about this stunning departure from a military doctrine he himself was instrumental in shaping.

Will we only have a debate on this after Katyusha rockets rain down on Tel Aviv from Gaza or Egyptian troop movements again precipitate a war?

Then there is the issue of Iran's nuclear-weapons program.

Just this past weekend, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani threatened Israel again after signing military pacts with the Syrian and Lebanese governments. Speaking in Beirut, Shamkhani said that if Israel strikes Iranian nuclear sites, "I can promise you that Ariel Sharon, assuming he stays alive, will appear on television screens and announce that he regrets this folly. He will suffer and scream out in pain."

Israel's options regarding the Iranian nuclear weapons program are all bad. With the EU busy appeasing Teheran and the Bush administration divided between those advocating military strikes and those advocating adopting the European line, Israel stands more or less alone before the specter of nuclear holocaust. The Iranian leadership has said outright that it does not see its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent force, but rather intends to use it to annihilate Israel.

Israel can either preemptively strike Iran's nuclear facilities; pressure the US to take action against them from its forward bases in Iraq and Afghanistan; or do nothing. Today it would seem that Israel has chosen the third option.

No doubt discussion of this existential threat to the Jewish state should be conducted in secret. But has the cabinet been engaged? Have ministers demanded a presentation on the matter by the air force, military intelligence and the Mossad? Is the Knesset holding hearings on this subject? And while our leaders should make their decisions in private, where are the newspapers and the TV channels and Israel Radio in all of this? Where is a national debate on the threat of physical annihilation? Isn't it better to have this discussion now than after Teheran tests its first nuclear bomb?

Lastly, we have the US plan to democratize the Arab and Muslim world. In recent weeks, the Bush administration has begun to implement its Greater Middle East Initiative. The US has launched its Arabic satellite news station Al-Hurra and Radio Free Syria radio station in a bid to bring freedom and democracy to our Arab neighbors for the first time in their history.

What is happening is no less than a revolution, albeit a tentative one, in the way the US views its Middle East policy. If in the past, consecutive US administrations have swallowed the Arab propaganda line that no reforms of their dictatorships were possible until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was resolved, today the Bush administration is rejecting this lie.

Speaking in Cairo this week, Undersecretary of State Mark Grossman said, "The effort for reform in Arab countries does not have to wait until there is a full peace." And what is Israel doing in the face of this welcome and courageous American policy? Our government is rejecting it, by deed if not by word.

By courting Mubarak while he leads the charge against the US initiative to bring freedom to the Arab world we are strengthening Mubarak and his authoritarian government that has made Egypt the epicenter of Arab anti-Semitism and the gravest conventional threat to Israeli security.

Sharon's newest adviser Peres was the first to work to scuttle Bush's June 24, 2002, call for democracy in Palestinian society when as foreign minister he created the fiction that a prime minister hand-picked by Arafat would mark the completion of regime change and democratization.

Minister Natan Sharansky, who was instrumental in convincing the Bush administration to view democratization of the Arab world as a central aim of its Middle East policy, has been shut out of Sharon's foreign policy debate.

And where is the Israeli media? Aside from laconic reports of the American initiative, buried in the back pages of the newspapers and at the tail ends of news broadcasts, never to be repeated, there has been no media discussion of the strategic ramifications of the American initiative.

Rather than support Palestinian journalists who are taking to the streets in droves to protest physical assaults against their colleagues by PA security forces, our journalists went to Ramallah two weeks ago to eat lamb chops with Jibril Rajoub – the man who spearheaded the PA's campaign against freedom in the Palestinian press by torching newspapers and torturing journalists since 1994.

As the US launches the one policy that has a chance of bringing us long-term peace, our policymakers and media elites placate these dictators and woo their henchmen.

There is no doubt that the deal with Hizbullah that brought us Tannenbaum the drug dealer in exchange for 400 terrorists was a mistake. But the best way to rectify the situation is to learn our lessons. We have three tests before us. Our ministers and our media outlets must be called to order. It is time that they do their jobs.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.