November 30, 2005

JERUSALEM – In an attack on Israeli naval forces, Palestinian militants disguised as fishermen blew up an Israeli patrol boat off the coast of Gaza yesterday. The militants and five Israeli sailors were killed in the blast. Hamas and Fatah claimed joint responsibility for the attack which the groups claimed came as revenge for the navy's sinking of a Palestinian weapons ship off the coast of Gaza last week.

UN Secretary General Kofi Anan and EU Foreign Policy chief Chris Patten issued separate statements yesterday condemning the attack. Yet both men maintained that the Israeli navy's control of the waters off the Gaza Coast represents an illegal occupation of Palestinian territorial waters and urged Israeli compliance with the recent UN General Assembly resolution calling for an Israeli naval withdrawal from the Gaza coast and the so-called Philadelphia corridor that separates southern Gaza from Egypt.

The Bush administration issued a statement condemning the attack but urged Israel to exercise restraint. A State Department spokesman said Israel "should consider the consequences of its actions."

In Israel, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres referred to the attack a "murderous provocation by the enemies of peace" and called for Israeli adherence to the UN resolution regarding Gaza.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reacted to the violence by stating that "Israel would choose the time and place to respond to the attacks." The Sharon government is currently debating a proposal by the Labor and Shinui parties calling for the evacuation of some 100 Israeli settlements in the West Bank located on the Palestinian side of the security barrier. The spokesman seemed to rule out a large Israeli military incursion into Gaza claiming that such an operation "would be a victory for Arafat."

Palestinian Authority minister Saeb Erekat reacted to the attack by condemning what he referred to as "Israel's suffocation of the Palestinian people by land and sea."

Israel's ultra-nationalist factions led by renegade Likud Knesset members who bolted Sharon's governing coalition after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza six months ago reacted to the naval attack by arguing the attack could have been foreseen and that Israel must dismantle Arafat's government and reoccupy Gaza.

"The latest attack, like the artillery attacks on our Southern towns, show that we must win the war before we can sue for peace," hawkish MK Uzi Landau said.

This news report is fictional. But if Arafat continues to behave like Arafat, and if Sharon continues to behave like Yitzhak Rabin, there is little reason to doubt the above scenario could transpire.

Since the Rabin-Peres government implemented the withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza and Jericho in May 1994, Arafat has advanced a policy aimed at bringing about precisely the scenario I outlined. After Israel ceded the first pieces of territory, Arafat worked on several fronts to ensure that the withdrawals would continue as Palestinian terror escalated.

In November 1994, Arafat reached an agreement with Hamas in Cairo that attacks on Israel would be staged in areas not under PA security control. In so doing, Arafat bought himself implausible, but accepted deniability regarding his support and indeed sponsorship of the attacks that led to the murder of some 183 Israelis before he launched his all-out terror war in September 2000.

In the meantime, Arafat and his deputies used the areas under their control to raise and train his militias to fight Israel. Gaza and Jericho were also used as safe havens for terror chiefs. So it was that during the Oslo years Hamas masterminds Yahya Ayash and Muhammed Deif operated openly in Gaza while other terrorists wanted for murder were enlisted into Jibril Rajoub's Preventive Security Service in Jericho.

In the economic arena, by diverting billions of dollars in international aid into secret bank accounts and by intimidating and blackmailing Palestinian businessmen and farmers, the PA impoverished its people. In so doing, Arafat secured for himself an angry, frustrated population that could be easily manipulated into turning its hatred toward Israel.

For his part, Rabin found himself in a bind. He had run for office in 1992 pledging not to negotiate with the PLO. When he reneged on that promise and embraced Arafat as a partner, he staked his reputation on the continuation of Oslo.

Before he oversaw the retreats from Gaza and Jericho, Rabin repeatedly declared that if the Palestinians reverted to terrorism, the IDF would reenter the areas and throw out the PA. Yet when in the aftermath of the withdrawals Israel was victimized by the worst terror it had seen since the 1950s, Rabin did not change course. Indeed, Rabin claimed that stopping negotiations would be a victory for the terrorists whom he referred to as "enemies of peace."

In reacting to the terror, Rabin repeatedly said "Israel will fight terror as if there is no peace process and fight for peace as if there is no terror." While the statement made for good propaganda, it made no practical sense and was impossible to follow. Arafat responded to each Israeli concession by strengthening the forces of terror and hatred within Palestinian society. Waging peace with Arafat was tantamount to surrendering to terrorism.

Sharon today is behaving in a similar fashion.

Over the past week, he has excoriated as "extremists" opponents of his plan. Just as Rabin said that ending Oslo would be a victory for Hamas, Sharon said Thursday that not moving ahead with his plan of retreat would be a victory for Arafat and Hamas.

Also like Rabin, Sharon argues "Israel's responses [to Palestinian violence] would be much harsher" after his retreat plan is implemented than they are today. Yet if Kofi Annan makes good on his promise this week to give the UN a role in post-withdrawal Gaza, as its role in post-withdrawal Lebanon make clear, it won't be easy to turn back the clock.

Indeed, what the last 42 months of Palestinian terror have shown is that regardless of the provocation, Israel will never garner international support for offensives against Palestinian terrorism.

Sharon has promised that after the withdrawal, Israel will be able to sit in its truncated form for years. Yet this cannot be true. Arafat will continue causing chaos to prevent that from happening. As Arafat's foreign minister Farouk Kaddumi said this week "Let the Gaza Strip be North Vietnam. We will use all available methods to liberate South Vietnam."

Arafat will not declare Palestinian statehood for Gaza. Doing so would bring diplomatic closure and enable a consensus in Israel to form. And the continuation of the war will bring pressure for further withdrawals emanating both from the Left (including Shinui and Olmert), as well as from abroad, as Israel will continue to be perceived as provoking the Palestinians by protecting itself.

Thursday's polls confirmed earlier ones that indicated a steep downward trend in support of Sharon's plan among Likud members. In reacting to this turn of the tide, Sharon declared repeatedly that a rejection of his plan will be a gift to Arafat and Hamas.

Why? Arafat and his minions in Hamas and the PA have stated countless times that their aim in the war is to cause a repeat in Judea, Samaria and Gaza of the unilateral withdrawal of IDF forces from Lebanon. And they have made clear that they view withdraw from Gaza and parts of Samaria as a victory for their side. Why doesn't Sharon listen to them?

Sharon's plan differs from Oslo in that it overtly calls for the destruction of Israeli communities. In so doing, it poses a danger to the vitality of Israeli society as a whole. Far from making Israel stronger, transferring Jews from their homes will traumatize the country. How will we be able to trust in our future in the face of the destruction of communities that millions of Israelis consider to be part of Israel?

In pushing his plan forward regardless of the Sunday's result, Sharon has weakened Likud. The governing party is liable to split apart in its aftermath irrespective of the decision of the voters. Yet this does not mitigate the importance of the poll. If a majority of Likud voters reject Sharon's plan, they will be working to save Israel from disaster. In spite of Sharon's statements to the contrary, those who oppose the plan on its merits are not extremists. They are merely people who have learned from the past.
 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The past 10 days have been good for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He was able to take a pat on the back from George W. Bush and turn it into public declarations of support for his plan to turn Gaza and much of Samaria into safe havens for terrorists from his heirs apparent in the Likud – Ministers Netanyahu, Shalom and Livnat.

Additionally, Sharon this week has successfully silenced debate of his plan to uproot 25 communities in Gaza and Samaria and to turn the territory over to Israel's enemies. He maneuvered his way out of debating Minister without Portfolio Uzi Landau about his plan before the Likud rank-and-file vote on the plan in two weeks. As well, Sharon has worked to prevent debate of his plan in the Knesset.

The fact that Sharon chose a date for the Likud poll that follows directly after the holidays, when most Israelis pay scant attention to the headlines, also works to ensure that the premier's party faithful will go to the polls with as little information as possible about his plan.

In this goal he finds a willing accomplice in the media. Our mainstream media outlets are doing everything they can to silence debate on the merits of his plan. The press has paid minimal attention to the fact that, in the days since Sharon's meeting with Bush, Bush and his people have repeatedly denied a shift in US policy away from the Palestinians and toward Israel.

If our media was not firmly backing Sharon's plan, this would not be the case. After all, the entire rationale of moving ahead with Sharon's plan is that Sharon has claimed that the US has given Israel something in exchange for implementing it. And yet, over the past week, the US has made quite clear that it will give Israel nothing.

Last Friday Bush explained, "All final status issues must still be negotiated between the parties."
What this means, as Secretary of State Colin Powell and others have been keen to point out, is that although Bush did state that the US thinks it would be unrealistic to have the so-called Palestinian refugees overrun Israel in the framework of an agreement, Bush did not commit the US to preventing it from happening.

Likewise, in spite of the fact that it may be unrealistic to expect that more than 250,000 Israelis would be driven out of their homes in a peace deal, it is not for the US to say. If the media was not mobilized to support Sharon's plan, surely the fact that the US gave Israel nothing would be given more than passing attention.

The strategy that Sharon is carefully following in selling his plan is to personalize the battle. So it is that MK Omri Sharon makes the dubious argument that if the party votes against the plan his father will resign. Young Sharon goes on to argue that his father is more important than Likud and that if Likud rejects the plan, and thereby rejects his father, the party will lose the support of the public.

We have seen this before. Yitzhak Rabin used this strategy to sell the Oslo Accord to voters. Ehud Barak used the plan to sell both the retreat from Lebanon and the Camp David summit. Both were successful in their bids to gain confidence for radical policies by framing public debate as Sharon is now doing. In the case of all three leaders, their success was based on the fact that the public perceived them all as security hawks.

The public viewed these former generals as security hawks because that's what they were. All three had fought hard at various times to expand the Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. They did so not for political reasons, but for military reasons. All understood that the settlements are vital for fighting terrorism because they provide IDF forces with safe bases from which to launch operations. They provide soldiers with knowledge of terrain. They provide easy access to Palestinian workers who can be used to gather intelligence.

But what Rabin, Barak and Sharon knew as generals they forgot as politicians. Rabin brought about a disaster with Oslo and Barak brought about disaster in Lebanon. Now Sharon looks set to do the same. A retreat from Gaza will damage Israel's negotiating position and strategic posture for years to come. It will not, as Sharon claims, dampen US pressure to retreat to the 1949 armistice lines. On the contrary, it will encourage it.

Israel will have shown that our demands are negotiable while Palestinian demands remain firm and inflexible. We will accept the principle that a Palestinian state must be free of Jews. Withdrawal reinforces the view that Israel can live alongside a terror state, as we do with Lebanon. Finally, the plan formalizes the incoherent view that Israel's security will be improved by barring our soldiers from Palestinian population centers.

How are we to understand the pattern of behavior by our generals turned prime ministers? As military commanders, all three leaders were schooled in the Ben-Gurion view that there should be no politics in the army. As a result, with few exceptions IDF generals retire with little practical knowledge of how to operate in diplomatic and political circles.

The sense among our generals that there ought to be a separation between security and politics also leads to a distorted perception that the two are unrelated. War isn't just diplomacy by other means. Diplomacy is also war by other means. Both are ways of advancing a nation's interests. Yet each requires specific skills and each operates according to different rules. Expertise in one does not translate into expertise in the other.

Our three generals-turned-prime ministers have each made statements to the effect that political considerations outweigh security considerations. Again, these statements are a function of their backgrounds. If political leaders are above military leaders and politics and security are two separate entities, then politics would trump security. But of course, while political leaders are in charge of military leaders, politics and security are two sides of the same national interest. Any political policy that undercuts security concerns will fail because it ignores the fact that the primary duty of a state is to provide security for its citizens.

What all this shows is that, in electing "security hawks" to the prime minister's office, Israel gets neither the security it seeks nor the political acumen and diplomatic savvy it needs. In other words, Israel loses out twice. We lose because we elect these men expecting they will act as the security hawks, then get something else entirely. And we lose because rather than having a veteran security hawk in power, we are governed by a bad politician. In the search for new leadership, it would be better to avoid the army.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

So, what did we get? After months of expectation and postponement, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Wednesday finally got his audience with US President George W. Bush.

Since the beginning of the year, we have been told day after day, "Just wait and see." So now that the visit is behind us, what did we get? What did Sharon bring back from Washington?

On the positive side, we received American acknowledgement of Israel's basic right as a sovereign state to defend itself against aggression. This is no small feat today. In acknowledging that Israel can defend itself, Bush said something that no other leader in the world would say today. Certainly not any leader in Europe where every action Israel takes to defend itself is condemned.

 Aside from that, Bush recognized the right of the Jewish people to self-determination by acknowledging Israel's right to remain a Jewish state. Here too, with the resurgence of the anti-Semitism throughout Europe, this statement should not be taken for granted. It is hard to imagine many European leaders saying as much.

Bush also embraced Israel as America's friend. This too is impressive. Today, the US needs the assistance of states like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to help it fight Al Qaida and the US is seeking to rebuild an Iraqi society that was poisoned by decades of Saddam's anti-Semitism. In this state of affairs it would not be surprising for an American president to eschew any public statements of support for Israel. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any other president standing with Israel's leader while his military forces fight Arab and Muslim armies and insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In these days of diplomatic isolation and ostracism, it is comforting to know that we have a friend in the White House.

If Sharon had simply wanted to go to Washington to remind Israelis that we have a powerful friend, we could stop the analysis here and call it a success. Unfortunately, Sharon did not go to Washington just to hear that America has not abandoned us to our fate. Rather he went there to receive American goodies in exchange for his plan to surrender Gaza and parts of Samaria to the Palestinians while they remain in a state of war against Israel. And here he returned empty-handed.

Sharon and his people claim that Bush's letter to Sharon contains such goodies and so it is important to read the letter closely.

A good attorney wrote Bush's letter. While the prime minister and his media flaks declare that the president agreed that the so-called Palestinian refugees not be allowed to immigrate to Israel, the president said no such thing. What Bush wrote was, "It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."

There is no commitment here. There is no positive statement that the US will never back the immigration of foreign-born Arabs to Israel in the framework of a deal with the PLO or any subsequent Palestinian leadership.

There is not even a simple declarative sentence stating that this will not stand. The president wrote, "It seems clear." What does that mean? It means nothing.

Then there is the issue of the Israeli communities that are not yet slated for destruction. Sharon and his spinmeisters claim that Bush agreed that many of these communities will remain inviolate as part of Israel even in the event that a Palestinian leadership arises that will cut a deal with Israel. But a look at the text shows something else entirely.

The president wrote, "In light of new realities on the ground [since 1949], 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."

Again, there is no positive statement of support for the continued growth and development of these communities. It is simply unrealistic to assume that hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in them will be forcibly transferred from their homes and communities. And this statement can actually backfire on Israel.

Take for instance the case of Jerusalem. Over the past decade the Palestinians, in an effort to create "facts on the ground" have built scores of largely illegal housing developments in the city. Many of these apartment blocks stand empty, awaiting the "return" of the so-called refugees. It will no doubt be argued that it would be unrealistic to deny the Palestinians sovereignty over these areas of the capital, given the "new realities on the ground."

Then too, there is the issue of Sharon's letter to Bush. In that letter, Sharon committed Israel to a continued ban on building in the remaining communities in Judea and Samaria when he wrote, "we are fully aware of the responsibilities facing the State of Israel. These include limitations on the growth of settlements."

So if Israel, under American pressure, agreed to continue to curtail the growth of the remaining communities in Judea and Samaria, how can we view the president's statement as support for the continued existence of these communities? If we aren't supposed to build in them, why should we trust that the US won't pressure us to give them up?

Indeed, Bush himself said that Sharon's plan has "started the process of removing settlements from the West Bank." Aside from all of this, Bush's letter, and indeed, Sharon's, continue to force Israel into an untenable position of having to fight terrorism while promising victory to the terrorists in the form of a state. Why should the Palestinians lose hope that terrorism pays when they have yet to pay a price for it?

As well, Bush and Sharon both wrote and said that they remain committed to strengthening the Palestinian security services. This is a regurgitation of a commitment that has been stated repeatedly since those same security services enabled the first suicide bombers to enter our cities in 1994.

And it makes no sense. Israel has exposed and the US has reviewed mountains of evidence proving that these security services are terrorist cells and that the Palestinian Authority itself is a terrorist entity. Yet in spite of this, the US continues to insist, and Israel continues to agree, that these security services should be reformed and strengthened and PA institutions supported and reinforced rather than destroyed and replaced.

Finally, as has been the case since the "land for peace" equation was coined, the demands on Israel from the exchange of letters are all concrete while the demands from the Palestinians are not. They have to reform and fight terror but there is no "or else." Nothing will happen to them if they don't. And as for the reform of their political institutions, there is no blueprint for how they are supposed to go about it, especially in light of the fact that the Bush administration has ruled out the option of getting rid of Yasser Arafat.

The truth is that it is hard to blame Bush for the fact that aside from comforting Israel with his declarations of support and friendship he gave Israel nothing on Wednesday. He didn't ask for this meeting. Sharon did. Sharon begged for it. The US didn't put Sharon up to his plan to surrender Gaza and uproot Jewish communities. He came up with the idea all by himself.

Given all of this, the question arises, why did we have to go through this edifying exercise in statecraft? Here one is reminded of the way that then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin decided in 1993 to take the European mediated Oslo Accord and have the Americans present it as their own plan. It was Rabin's view that American adoption of his radical decision to cut a deal with the PLO would make the agreement more palatable to a skeptical Israeli populace that viewed Arafat as an unreconstructed mass murderer committed to the destruction of Israel.

Then as today, Israel's leaders went to Washington and offered the Americans a gift. Whereas the US expected Israel to stand strong and not give an inch in the face of terror in spite of America's interest in getting a peace process going, both Rabin and Sharon presented their US counterparts with an easy win. No administration will be opposed to the notion of a peace process or an Israeli surrender of land. It serves the US interest to have a peace process or a withdrawal process going, especially before an election. It mollifies the Arabs. It paints the president as a moderate champion of peace. And it costs the US nothing.

Sharon, like Rabin, preaches defeatism and retreat because he sees time working against us and for our enemy. According to this view, in the event of a stalemate, Israel must surrender because our enemies have more staying power.

But there is an alternative approach to the situation. This approach says that we should fight the war waged against us with the aim of winning. On the ground this means that we fight terror everywhere it exists, we take away the bases of operation and support from the terrorists and we push hard for societal change among our enemies by enacting policies that will lead toward democratization. By so acting, it is actually Israel, not our enemies, that has the real staying power.

This is what the US is doing in Iraq. It is also the opposite of what Israel, under Sharon's leadership, is now doing and indeed, the opposite of what we have been doing since 1993. It is a policy built on the strength and resilience of our people and our democracy and the weakness of our enemies' dictatorial terrorist breeding grounds.

Too bad Sharon has so little faith in us. I'll bet that Bush would have supported such a strategy.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

This week it finally happened. Hizbullah has come out of the closet and launched a full-scale military campaign against US-led forces in Iraq.

Two weeks after the US shelved its sanctions against Hizbullah sponsor Syria, and as the US remains silent in the face of increased Iranian assertiveness in advancing the mullocracy's Manhattan Project, the cat jumped out of the bag.

Ushering in his fight against the US, Hizbullah-Iranian front man Moqtada al-Sadr told his followers last Friday, "I am the striking arm for Hizbullah and Hamas in Iraq because the fate of Iraq and Palestine is the same." Under the spell of Sadr's call to "terrorize" the Americans, Shi'ite militiamen launched attacks in several cities at once.

Militarily, the results have been mixed but have served to cause a political maelstrom by spooking US coalition partners into reconsidering their involvement in Iraq.

Hizbullah's appearance in Iraq is not a surprise. Although Sadr's offensive has been sudden, it followed a year-long buildup of Hizbullah's organizational, propaganda, and military apparatuses in Iraq.

In the weeks before the US-led invasion last March, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah was already calling for suicide bombings against US forces in the event that they went through with the invasion. Shortly after the fall of Saddam's regime, Hizbullah opened offices in Basra and Safwan.

While press coverage of Sadr has portrayed him as a young firebrand who acts autonomously, his connections to Hizbullah and to Iran are long-standing. Nasrallah is personally tied to Sadr's family. In 1976, he studied under Sadr's father Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in Najaf. Back in Lebanon, Nasrallah joined the Shi'ite Amal militia when it was led by its founder, Sadr's uncle Musa.

Aside from his personal ties to Nasrallah, Sadr takes his direction from Ayatollah Haeri, one of the most ardent extremists in Iranian ruling circles. And on the family level, Sadr's aunt is reportedly the first lady of Iran, Mrs. Muhammad Khatami. Iranian Revolutionary Guards reportedly comprise the backbone of Sadr's fighting force.

At the same time that Hizbullah, like Sadr, was establishing itself in post-Saddam Iraq, mysterious terrorists were systematically killing moderate Shi'ite clerics who were working with the US. First came the April 2003 assassination of Abdul Majid al-Khoei and Haider Kelidar in the Ali Mosque in Najaf. Sadr is the chief suspect in Khoei's murder. Then in August, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim was murdered outside the same mosque. Both Khoei and Hakim were considered moderates who wished for a secular, multiethnic Iraq to succeed Saddam's dictatorship.

Interestingly, each time another pro-coalition Shi'ite leader has been killed, Nasrallah has studiously called for civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites to be averted at all cost. This message became almost hysterical in the aftermath of the attack on Shi'ite worshipers in Karbala and Baghdad during the Ashoura holiday in early March; 140 worshipers were killed in the bombings.

The day of the bombings, Nasrallah took to the airwaves on Hizbullah TV's Al-Manar satellite network and called for calm at all costs. Referring to Shi'ite-Sunni sectarian strife as "a strategic danger," he alleged a "conspiracy" to sow hatred between the two groups and insinuated that the Mossad had something to do with the bombings.

In the same address, Nasrallah attacked the Sunni Taliban, claiming they had killed more Sunnis than Shi'ites during their period in power in Afghanistan. He argued that because of their murderousness towards fellow Muslims, the Taliban were responsible for the US takeover of the country and the establishment of a pro-American government that stands opposed to jihad. A similar event, he argued, must be prevented from occurring in Iraq.

Michael Ledeen, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, explained that defeating US-led forces in Iraq is the top priority for Teheran and, by extension, its terrorist proxies. "For Iran, the struggle against the US in Iraq is an existential struggle."

Echoing Nasrallah's speech, Ledeen said, "If Iraq is able to achieve stability under a democratic, secular government, after the same has happened in Afghanistan, the Iranian regime is finished."

The main reason that Hizbullah constitutes a danger of a new order to the US-led occupation forces is because it has succeeded in a way that no other group has in unifying the terrorist forces operating in Iraq in the common cause of defeating coalition forces. It is in this vein that Sadr's call for unity between Palestinian and Iraqi terror groups becomes understandable.

The Palestinians, as Saddam's favorite cause, were historically despised by the Iraqi Shi'ites whom Saddam brutally oppressed. Indeed, immediately after Saddam's downfall last spring, the Iraqi Governing Authority threw Palestinians out of their state-supplied apartments throughout the country as punishment for their support for Saddam.

Embracing the Palestinian cause is a way of building bridges to the Sunni groups that are battling coalition forces in Fallujah, Tikrit, and Ramadi. At least in Ramadi, this unity is further advanced by the participation of Hizbullah's good friends the Syrians in the fighting.

Iran itself is well placed to project pan-Islamic unity over the issue of Israel. Since 2000, it has become the largest sponsor of Palestinian terror groups, surpassing Saddam's largesse by leaps and bounds even though the Palestinians are Sunnis.

Islamic Jihad has always been an Iranian group. Even before the Palestinian terror war began in September 2000, Iran began making overtures toward Fatah. They blossomed into a full-blown sponsorship after the Iranian arms ship Karine-A was intercepted in January 2002.

Iran has also picked up the slack in Saudi financing of Hamas, and it is now estimated that it finances at least half of the group's $30 million annual budget. No doubt, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's decision to officially bring Hamas and Islamic Jihad into his government was influenced by Iranian dominance of all three organizations.

Aside from Hizbullah's ability to unify the forces fighting the coalition, it is a threat of a new magnitude because Nasrallah is the world master of terrorist warfare. With Syrian and Iranian military sponsorship, he successfully trapped Israel into abandoning the initiative in the fighting in southern Lebanon. Through a nefarious mix of terror, propaganda, negotiations, and blackmail, he forced the government to accept a low-intensity conflict it could not shape through offensive strikes.

Nasrallah made brilliant use of psychological warfare against us. He was able to convince Israel to cut and run by playing to our worst fear as a nation: that we were fighting a pointless and unnecessary war.

He did so by carefully orchestrating terror attacks at key political junctures and by convincing influential Israeli constituencies that our actions in Lebanon were futile and pointless, and therefore our losses were self-inflicted. These constituencies were then galvanized to act unwittingly as Hizbullah's representatives to the nation as a whole.

The Israeli experience with Hizbullah, and the fact that Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, and the Palestinians are now actively supporting and involving themselves in operations against the coalition ought to lead US policymakers to base their current and future actions, both military and political, on an understanding of Hizbullah's mode of operation and on the limitations to its operations.

Hizbullah's operations are limited first and foremost by the fact that it lacks the ability to defeat conventional forces militarily. Because of this, it operates in a manner it believes will induce demoralization of coalition members. Militarily this will translate into an attempt to induce a constant low-level bloodletting that will lend the impression of chaos and inability to achieve order and stability.

As Ledeen notes, the US should not expect a sudden offensive, an "October surprise," immediately before the presidential elections. Rather, "the US should expect an April surprise, a May surprise, a June, July, August, September surprise, an October, and a November surprise."

By playing on the US fear that victory is impossible to achieve, that, as Sadr said, Iraq will become "another Vietnam," Hizbullah will seek to convince enough Americans that staying is pointless to force George W. Bush out of office and force a retreat of US forces from Iraq. This would be achieved to greatest effect if a sense of chaos and futility can be conveyed to the American people watching the violence on their television screens.

To combat this effort, it is vital for the administration not to lose control of the tone of the public debate either in Iraq or in the US. The decision to close Sadr's newspaper was of crucial importance for this reason. As Sadr's militia is publishing its announcements on Hizbullah's Al-Manar satellite network, arresting Al-Manar reporters and blocking the station from Iraqi television would also be a vital move.

Domestically, political opponents, like Sens. Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd, should be placed on the defensive for buying into Hizbullah's psychological warfare in repeating the analogy between Iraq and Vietnam.

Hizbullah also operates under a second limitation. It cannot fight unless it is clear to its state sponsors in Damascus and Teheran that its battle will not place their national interests in danger. If the US agrees, as Israel did, to limit its fight against the terrorists to the battlefield of their choosing, while appeasing their sponsors on other fronts, Hizbullah will fight on forever.

Because of this, US inaction on the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program, like its decision to hold up sanctions against Syria, is self-defeating. Similarly, the distinction made by the administration between the jihad against Israel, which can be appeased, and the jihad against the US, which must be defeated, is both unsustainable and destructive.

In Hizbullah, the US has found a dangerous and cunning foe. Hizbullah, together with its state sponsors, strives to reenact against the US in Iraq its success against Israel in Lebanon. The US must make sure not to repeat Israel's mistakes. If it avoids Israel's mistakes, the US will ensure its eventual success in bringing stability and freedom to Iraq and score an enormous victory in the war on terror as a whole.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Speaking to the Likud's Central Committee Tuesday night, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon maintained that while as prime minister he has "supreme responsibility" over public policy, he still believes that "major decisions" like his plan to retreat unilaterally from the Gaza Strip "should be brought to a democratic vote."

This is a rather ironic bit of demagoguery from Sharon who, since he announced his plan to retreat from Gaza amid reports that he is to be indicted on bribery charges, has prevented any constructive debate or vote on his plan in any of the legally constituted forums of government. Neither his cabinet nor the Knesset has been presented with the prime minister's radical plan of withdrawal under fire.

Sharon's plan to cut and run from all of Gaza and still to be determined portions of Judea and Samaria is being advanced against the backdrop of increasing collaboration among global terror organizations. Just this week Hamas chieftain Khaled Mashaal met with Hizballah overlord Hassan Nasrallah and the two agreed to tighten the collaboration between their terror groups. Hamas's reaction to Ahmed Yassin's death made it clear that Hamas is not an autonomous organization but rather a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which itself is a major segment of Al Qaida.

Hamas communiques say nothing about the Palestinians. Rather they address themselves to the Arab and Islamic nation, much in the style of Al Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

But we can be certain that we will not have any debate or discussion of what awaits us the day after an Israeli withdrawal. A democratic vote on the issue, as Sharon indicated he supports, might have had a chance of bringing various aspects of the plan to the public's attention. But what Sharon forced down the throats of his Central Committee members Tuesday evening is not a vote at all. It is, at best, an opinion poll. And, like most opinion polls, it will be run like a popularity contest.

The Likud members who will be called on to vote on the withdrawal from Gaza will not be participating in a legal exercise in participatory democracy. They will not be voting in a referendum. A referendum must be legislated by the Knesset. And the short public discussion last December of a referendum made clear to Sharon that he would lose control of his agenda if he allowed democratically elected representatives to have a hand in structuring it. And so the idea was shelved.

In their upcoming vote, Likud members will not be participating in an exercise that is subordinate to any rules of electioneering. Since there is no legal basis for their vote, there will presumably be no legal restrictions on donations to one side or the other of the debate. There will be no limitations or prohibitions placed on foreign financing of commercials or billboards. There will be no obligation for anyone to disclose the sources of their funding. Quite simply, in the uncharted territory of this non-legal vote, there is a possibility that the votes can simply be bought.
What's to stand in anyone's way?

To ensure that the vote will follow a vacuous and short debate on the plan, where none of its obvious dangers will receive too much attention, the resolution passed on Tuesday calls for a vote to take place no more than three weeks after Sharon decides he wants it to take place.

Sharon's associates explained to the media on Wednesday that their plan is to have the vote carried out before Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has a chance to decide whether or not to indict the prime minister for accepting bribes.

Under the gun of a possible indictment, it is the prime minister's popularity that will be put to a vote. And the "opponent" that Sharon will be running against will not be his Likud rivals, who enjoy support among party members. Sharon will be running against the much despised State's Attorney Edna Arbel, who with her usual temerity and penchant for abuse of power, let it be known that she wants Sharon indicted.

Sharon's opponents within the Likud are deeply worried. Given that Sharon is making this a contest between himself and Arbel, they cannot get a critical mass of ministers willing to campaign against him.

Aside from that, if the party members vote against the plan, Sharon will not be the only loser. The Likud as a party will also be weakened. A party that paralyzes its leaders is a party that cannot be trusted by the voters.

And so ignored is the fact that the plan leaves Israel vulnerable not only to a more lethal threat of terrorism emanating from a Judenrein Gaza but also from the type of international pressure Sharon groundlessly claims a withdrawal will prevent. As is its wont, the media, always game for an Israeli retreat, is complicit in this conscious dumbing-down of the national discourse.

On Thursday Haaretz reported that US President George W. Bush will tell Sharon that, in exchange for leaving Gaza, the US supports the view that Israel will not have to retreat from all of Judea and Samaria. This does not mean, as Sharon would wish for us to believe, that the US supports Israeli annexation of blocs of settlement. To the contrary: The US still insists that Israel not build the security fence in areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines. If Sharon announces that he is adding ten neighborhoods to Ma'aleh Adumim and five to Efrat after he throws thousands of Israeli citizens from their homes in Gush Katif, the Americans will not accept this. The fact of the matter is that it is Israel that is scaling back its positions, while the US remains adamant about defending the Palestinians' full territorial demands.

The press tells us that the US has agreed to Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's conditions for his support of the plan. This is not true. Netanyahu stated that in return for an Israeli surrender in Gaza, the US must announce that it rejects the Palestinian demand for a so-called right of return that would allow millions of foreign-born Arabs opposed to Israel's existence to immigrate to Israel and demographically undo the state, or, at least create the conditions for a Lebanese-style civil war.

It would seem obvious that the US opposes a demand that would cause the destruction of Israel. And yet the US refuses to accept this condition. Rather, it is reportedly willing to say only that it supports Israel's right to be a Jewish state, which can mean a lot or nothing depending on the circumstances. In addition, the US is planning to announce that the so-called Palestinian refugees will have a right of free immigration to the Palestinian state. That is all very fair, but where exactly are these foreign Arabs to work? Who will be pressured to ensure their economic viability?

These would all be interesting issues to hear debated among our political leadership. Yet to go against the unilateral withdrawal plan means to go against Sharon in his time of victimization by the State's Attorney's office – and who could bear to do such a thing?

The sad truth is that both Sharon and Arbel are abusing their offices. By making the adoption of his plan before Mazuz decides on an indictment the central unifying principle of his political and diplomatic efforts, Sharon is lending credence to the view that his radical diplomatic platform is based largely on personal considerations. In so doing, Sharon is cheapening his office, damaging the credibility of our political institutions, undermining his party and delegitimizing his own leadership.

In publicly stating her view that a criminal indictment of an elected official is grounds for his forced resignation from office, Arbel is using her position as State's Attorney to advance a view that is not within the purview of her office and gravely undermines the democratic process. This is a patent abuse of power. It harms her office by damaging the public trust in the fairness and equity of our justice system.

Sharon today is advancing a policy that is antithetical to the policies he advanced when he was elected chairman of Likud and prime minister just a bit over a year ago. Sharon ran for office on a commitment to fight relentlessly against terrorism and a refusal not merely to retreat under fire, but a refusal to conduct negotiations for as long as the Palestinians enabled terrorist cells to operate at any level.

The policy of retreat that Sharon now embraces was the platform of his election rival, Labor candidate Amram Mitzna. This policy was roundly rejected not only by Likud members, but by the rank and file of Israeli voters who served up Labor's greatest defeat in its history.

If Sharon respected democracy, as he claimed on Tuesday night, he would return his leadership mandate to the voters and ask to be reelected on the basis of his adoption of the 2003 Labor Party platform.

Of course he will not do this. But the fact that the prime minister is behaving improperly does not give our other elected officials the right to do so. It is the duty of our governing ministers and members of Knesset to require Sharon to present his plan to them for their oversight and approval before he concludes a deal with a foreign head of state. The Knesset attempted to force Sharon to do so a couple of weeks ago, but Sharon called the members' bluff by turning his presentation into a vote of confidence and proceeded to say absolutely nothing. Sharon has sidelined his government ministers by bypassing their calls for debate with ego-massaging meetings with headline-hungry ministers. This can no longer be countenanced.

Our elected officials have a sworn duty to participate in policymaking and to oversee and debate the policies of the government. The prime minister is not, in our parliamentary democracy, a supreme authority. He is the head of a government of empowered ministers and the leader of the largest parliamentary bloc in the Knesset. The Likud Central committee is not a politburo and the Prime Minister's office is not the Kremlin. It is time for our political leaders to call Sharon's bluff.

This is, after all, a democracy.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.