Thursday morning it was announced that the eight British servicemen who were nabbed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Shatt al-Arab waterway on the Iraq-Iran border earlier in the week had been released to the custody of the British Embassy in Teheran.

Remarking on the transfer of the British sailors and marines who had been pictured blindfolded and forced to apologize for trespassing into Iranian territorial waters on Iranian state television, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw expressed his gratitude to the Iranian government for its cooperation in settling the matter. "I'd like to express my thanks to my colleague, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, for his assistance," Straw said.

This is all very diplomatic and pleasant. In an earlier day, when diplomacy was used as an arm of a nation's interest, Straw would not have been thanking the Iranians for backing down after having committed an act of war, indeed of piracy, against Great Britain. He would have been issuing an ultimatum backed by a massing of British troops, already conveniently nestled along the border in Basra. But such are not our times.

Last week a Jordanian military court convicted and sentenced 15 al-Qaida terrorists to prison terms for their roles in planning attacks against American, Israeli, and Jordanian intelligence targets in the kingdom. Of the 15, only one terrorist was actually in Jordanian custody for the trial. The rest, 12 Jordanians and two Iraqis, are happily sheltered in Iran, awaiting their next opportunity to strike.

This week, as Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was congratulating himself and the security services for bringing levels of terrorist attacks down 75 percent over last year, IDF and Shin Bet units were preventing yet another suicide bombing in the capital. Two Fatah terrorists, the dispatcher and the bomber, were arrested in a-Ram, north of the capital. Their arrest led to the seizure of a 10-kilogram bomb, hidden in a child's school bag that was being transported in a taxi from Nablus.

Interrogation of the would-be mass murderers uncovered that Hizbullah, Iran's terrorist proxy, had ordered the bombing.

As we know, Shi'ite terrorist Moqtada el-Sadr, who launched a guerrilla war against coalition forces and moderate Shi'ites in southern Iraq this past spring, takes his orders from the ayatollahs in Iran. US intelligence services have also pointed a finger at Iran for sponsoring al-Qaida forces in Saudi Arabia and for sheltering senior al-Qaida commanders in the Islamic Republic.

Commenting on the interdiction of the British patrol boats and their crews this week in National Review Online, Iran expert Michael Ledeen raised the possibility that the boats and their crews had been interdicted by the Iranians because they were laying ship-detection sensors in the waterway.

This, he explained, is necessary to protect the Iraqi oil terminals in Basra from further sabotage, which has rendered the Iraqi oil industry a virtual hostage to terrorist forces that have repeatedly attacked pipelines and terminals over the past year.

Much of the sabotage, according to Ledeen, has been sponsored by Iran, which has an interest in seeing not only the destabilization of Iraq but a precipitous rise in oil prices before the US presidential elections, in the hopes that such an event will bring about the defeat of President George W. Bush at the polls.

To a certain degree, Straw can be forgiven for his obsequious prattle about the cooperation Britain received from the Iranian government after the same government committed an act of war against Straw's country. After all, Britain wanted to make sure its men were released unmolested. But how does one explain France?

At the same time as the British servicemen were being humiliated on Iranian television (the Arabic channel, to ensure the widest possible regional audience no doubt), a high-level official French delegation was visiting the Iranian capital to celebrate the reinstatement of Air France's flight service between Teheran and Paris.

According to The Teheran Times, Serge Degallaix, political adviser to French Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin, told his Iranian hosts that France "believes that Iran has the right to acquire nuclear technology meant for peaceful purposes." So, at least under Jacques Chirac, France, which was behind the Iraqi nuclear weapons program in the 1970s and 1980s, is consistent in its approach. It believes that oil rich rogue states have the right to pursue nuclear capabilities.

And France is also consistent it its wish to appease these dictatorships. Last June, dovetailing the conclusion of a number of lucrative business deals between French companies and Iran, the French police launched a crackdown on members of an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. They arrested 164 members and launched investigations against 17 on terrorism-related charges. Yet one year later, French human rights officials noted this week in a demonstration against the crackdown, not one indictment has been filed.

Iranian officials continued to press the French to crackdown on the group during the delegation's visit to Teheran. Degallaix assured his hosts that France considers the group a terrorist organization and would not allow it to operate in the country.

All of this Anglo-French brown-nosed wrangling and Iranian aggression directly follows the latest resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency on the status of Iran's nuclear weapons program. The resolution, which is considered "harsh," was drafted by France, Britain, and Germany, the three nations whose foreign ministers interceded on Teheran's behalf last year to ensure that the mullocracy was given a stay of undetermined length before it would face UN Security Council sanctions for violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by advancing its nuclear weapons program.

The resolution, issued last week stated that the IAEA members "deplored" the fact that "Iran's cooperation has not been as full, timely, and proactive as it should have been." The resolution is a detailed list of the finding of highly enriched uranium at Iranian nuclear facilities that has not been adequately explained. The IAEA will meet again to discuss the Iranian nuclear program in September.

The fact is that everyone knows that the Iranians are actively pursuing their nuclear weapons program and that this program may already be producing bombs. Estimates last year were that Iran will have the nuclear fuel cycle down and be capable of producing several atomic bombs per year by next year. For no apparent reason, as Iran moves full speed ahead on its uranium enrichment programs and insists that the international community "accept Iran as a member of the nuclear club," the estimated timeline of Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities has been moved to 2006.

Remarking on the IAEA resolution, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday that at the next IAEA meeting in September, "judgments can be made as to what action might be appropriate." A veiled threat perhaps? Perhaps. Yet it is hard to escape the fact that this statement parrots those made a year ago after the IAEA's first inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities in Nantanz showed evidence of uranium enrichment activities. And the IAEA is still issuing resolutions.
When we look at Iran's brazen defiance of all international norms of behavior – with its support of terrorists, acts of aggression on the high seas, and confrontational advancement of its nuclear weapons program – we must ask the question, what is the US waiting for?

In a statement on the Iranian nuclear program last April, Bush said, "It is intolerable for the peace and the stability in the Middle East if they [the Iranians] get a nuclear weapon, especially when their stated objective is the destruction of Israel." Yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, there have been "a disturbing number of quiet remarks in Washington and other Western capitals recently to the effect that the world will just have to 'get used to' the idea of the Iranians having nukes."

Indeed, when we look at British and French appeasement of the mullahs and we see Powell talking about maybe taking some action (perhaps economic sanctions that will take years to implement and still will be ineffective as oil prices rise to $60 a barrel) in September, we see that when the international community speaks, it doesn't have much to say about the single largest threat to the survival of the State of Israel today.

And in the meantime, here in Israel, the first target for the Iranian bombs, we obsess over whether and when and how Jews will be thrown out of their homes and communities in the territories and get flustered over remarks by US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer about the need to speed up the demolition of the so-called outpost communities of mobile homes on hilltops in Judea. We pontificate endlessly and vacuously about whether or not it is a good idea for Egypt to train a 30,000 man Palestinian army that will be deployed on the outskirts of Ashkelon.

In light of the failure of any outside power to take a concerted stand on Iran, we must ask the question: Are our leaders, like their Western counterparts, quietly resigned to our nuclear annihilation as we quibble over strategic irrelevancies and lesser orders of threats?

Because if there is the slightest chance that the answer is yes, we had better set about replacing them with others who are not, as quickly as possible.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

This week was the first time that the Palestinian Authority publicly acknowledged its responsibility for the Aksa Martyr Brigades terrorist group which is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department.

In an attempt to solve an employment dispute between the PA and the Aksa Brigades, the central committee of Fatah, which is to the PA what the Politburo was to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, met to discuss the difficulties of terrorists who have recently been laid off by the PA. PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who is touted as the great white hope for Palestinian reform by the Bush Administration, announced at the meeting that the needs of the terror group were receiving the full attention of the Palestinian leadership. In his view, the most important thing was to protect terrorists wanted by Israel for attacks against Israeli citizens from the long arm of the IDF. That is, in Qurei's view, the most urgent goal is to provide a safe haven for terrorists.
 

In the coming weeks, US envoys David Satterfield and William Burns are scheduled to arrive in the area in yet another attempt to jump start negotiations between Israel and the PA based on the so-called Road Map. The idea now being touted is to reduce the existing twelve Palestinian militias into three and to have them come under the control of Qurei or PA security boss Muhammed Dahlan. But who will be in these newly "reformed" militias? On Sunday night, Qurei and his colleagues agreed that the terrorists from the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades would be asked to join.

Also this week, Qurei met in Gaza with Hamas terror chiefs Mahmoud Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh. Their talks, aimed at reaching a rapprochement between the PA and Hamas, centered on Hamas's conditions for joining Qurei's cabinet. Hamas demands the health and education ministries and, if it receives them, it will allow its terrorists to also join the "reformed" PA militias.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Dahlan said that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were welcome to join the PA security forces. Mahmoud Abbas, the much heralded former prime minister said that if it were up to him, he would have brought Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists into the PA security forces. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also designated as foreign terror organizations by the US State Department.

This week also, outgoing CIA director George Tenet met in Cairo with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to discuss Egypt's involvement in the Gaza Strip in the event that Israel follows through with its planned unilateral withdrawal from the area. Egypt, which is receiving plaudits from Washington for its willingness to lend a hand in ensuring order in Gaza in the aftermath of the proposed withdrawal, has made clear through word and deed that it views putting Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists on the payroll of the "reformed" PA militias as is its central goal.

In sharp contrast, this week, Egyptian security forces rounded up members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

The men were accused of having undergone terror training in the PA areas which, Egyptian officials allege, they were planning to use in order to carry out terror attacks in Egypt, Iraq and Chechnya. That is, today, even as the IDF is deployed in Gaza, and as the PA is in charge of all the militias, the area is being used as a training ground for global terrorism.
 

For their part, Egyptian officials have made clear time and again that in the event of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Egypt will have no interest in curbing Palestinian terror groups operating in the area against Israel. According to Ha'aretz, a senior Egyptian official has stated bluntly, "We will not be the policemen for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."

This is not surprising given that moderate Egypt is in actuality one of the prime state sponsors of Palestinian terrorist groups. Not only has it enabled weapons smuggling from Egypt to Gaza, according to MK Yuval Steinitz, Chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, "Egypt is the logistical support base for Hamas." In the event of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Egypt can be counted on not to curb the power of Palestinian terrorists but to enhance it. It will demand that Israel end the naval blockade of the Gaza coastline and it will further insist that the Gaza airport, closed since the start of the war, be reopened. According to military analyst Ze'ev Schiff, the reason for this is that Egypt has an interest in Palestinian terrorism against Israel because Egypt has an interest in a weak Israel.

Speaking to the issue of what will likely occur in Gaza as a result of an IDF pullout, no less an authority than the architect of the pullout plan himself, National Security Advisor Giora Eiland, inferred to a Washington audience recently that if the Lebanon model holds, Gaza will become a haven for terrorists and a strategic threat to Israel as a result of the accumulation of sophisticated arsenals that can be used to take out vital infrastructures and conduct mass murder. Eiland also explained that if the Lebanon model were to hold, the introduction of foreign forces to the area would not ease the violence but would more likely act as cover for terrorists as they take action against Israel.

One can reasonably ask if all of this is the case, what is Israel's problem? Why is the Israeli government acting so irrationally? But in truth, given the actions of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, running roughshod over his government ministers, MKs, party members, and political support base, the fact that the Israeli government under Sharon has ceased to base its policies on the national interest of Israel must, sadly, be taken as a given for now.

In the meantime, there remains one government that seems to still recognize the need to stop terror funding and to prevent the provision of safe haven for terrorist organizations. This government sits in Washington, DC.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has gone on the offensive from Karachi to Kansas City in stemming funding to terrorist organizations. It has invaded two countries and sent its military to spots around the globe to prevent the entrenchment of terror groups and to disrupt their activities. Yet the Bush administration is still funding groups that support, abet, produce and finance Palestinian terrorist organizations. The US government supports Sharon's half-baked plan that will render the Gaza Strip a terror training base to which jihadis from all over the world will gravitate for training and from which they will emerge, ready to kill on demand.

It has been argued that the Bush administration cannot be more Zionist than the Israeli government. But this is a false argument. In curbing its support for the PA and in ending its support for the transfer of Gaza to the control of Egyptian supported terrorists, the US will not be acting in Israel's interest. It will be advancing its own national security interests. The sad and terrible thing about Sharon's policy spasms is that by continuing to allow the PA to operate and by calling for an Israeli retreat when the war is still ongoing and the enemy mutates by the day, Sharon is not merely harming the interests of his own country, he is harming the interests of the US in winning the war on global terror.

Palestinian Media Watch this week submitted a report to members of the US Congress and the Senate in which it stated example after example of how US financial assistance to the PA is being used to advance terrorism. The US provides financial assistance to Palestinian municipalities whose leaders instruct their citizens in jihad and inculcate them to hate and work towards the destruction of Israel and America.

USAID funds Palestinian universities even as these universities allow Hamas and Islamic Jihad to operate openly on their campuses espousing their genocidal ideologies and recruiting students into active involvement in terror attacks. According to the PMW report, seven students studying at USAID funded universities have carried out suicide bombings that have murdered hundreds of Israelis.

USAID assists the Palestinians in spite of the fact that Palestinian NGOs have refused to sign a form committing themselves not to aid terrorist organizations and in spite of the fact that the PA's legislative council issued a condemnation of the US for requiring aid recipients to prevent the transfer of US taxpayer dollars to terrorist organizations.

Aside from reconsidering its refusal to see the PA as it sees every other terrorist organization and regime in the world, the US has to ask the question how its support for Palestinian statehood squares with its commitment to overthrow regimes that support terrorism. The Palestinians themselves say every single day that their "reformed" security forces will simply be more overtly steeped in terror after their reconstitution than they have been to date. This week the PA admitted what the international community has been denying in the face of overwhelming proof for the past three years. It admitted that the Aksa Martyr Brigades is not "loosely affiliated with Fatah." The Aksa Martyr Brigades are Fatah and a branch in the PA itself.

And it wasn't Arafat who made the announcement. It was Qurei, the "reform" prime minister and it was Dahlan the "reform" security boss who made it clear that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also welcome to join the PA. So given this, how can the US possibly have a policy of support for Palestinian statehood when it is abundantly clear that such a state would be a terror stronghold no better than Afghanistan under the Taliban?

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington could be excused for following Jerusalem's lead when Israel's government insisted that transferring territory to terrorists would enhance security. But in the post-Sept. 11 world, it should be clear to Washington that continuing to cultivate terrorists will not only not advance US interests, it will cost innocent human lives.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The events of the past week have laid bare the three pathologies of the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

First we have the Palestinian rank-and-file.

Under the headline "Palestinians turn on tunnel men," Reuters reported Sunday that in the aftermath of the IDF's recent operations in Rafah aimed at uncovering underground tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt to Gaza, Palestinians in Rafah have been threatening and attacking weapons smugglers. Mustafa, a tunnel smuggler told the news service, "Many people now oppose our work. I know of cases where people have noticed others digging a tunnel and they have assaulted them."

The essence of this story is that, in spite of what the Palestinians say, they know perfectly well just who is responsible for the IDF's actions in Rafah. It is not Israel that is morally responsible for the destruction of homes. It is the Palestinian terrorists who hide behind civilians in order to smuggle terrorist munitions who are responsible for the rubble.

A second report, by Ehud Ya'ari in The Jerusalem Report was even more groundbreaking. According to Ya'ari, (and my own Palestinian sources back the gist of his claim), there is a lively conversation going on in the Palestinian cities of Judea and Samaria about the necessity of reinstating the "Jordanian option." That option involves a renewal of the Jordanian role in Palestinian affairs and the regeneration or replacement of the Palestinian security forces under Jordanian control. Ya'ari reported that there is talk of deploying the Palestinian battalion of the Jordanian army and perhaps even building a new force of Palestinians from Jordan that would replace the PLO's militias.

It should be recalled that until the late King Hussein renounced Jordan's claims to Judea and Samaria in 1988, Israel and Jordan had a quiet, effective power-sharing arrangement in the areas. Palestinians from Judea and Samaria held Jordanian citizenship. The educational system was Jordanian, complete with Jordanian textbooks and matriculation exams.

The underlying understanding here among average Palestinians is that the PLO and its terror partners have failed the Palestinians. If the Palestinians are to have a chance of living a reasonable life and bring prosperity to their communities and security to their society, they must first replace the PLO and its Palestinian Authority with powerful moderates from Jordan.

What is strange about the entire idea is that Jordan would express even the slightest interest in adopting it. Jordan, after all, is a British invention. The Hashemites were imported from Iraq and the majority of Jordanians describe themselves as Palestinians. Indeed the Palestinian population of Jordan, which numbers 3.2 million out of Jordan's population of 5.5 million, is more numerous than the populations of Judea, Samaria and Gaza combined.

Why would Jordan risk destabilizing its kingdom by enabling a re-confederation of the Palestinian populations on both sides of the Jordan River? Ya'ari argues that it owes to US pressure. Yet with Washington's fixation on trying to "reform" the PA under the leadership of Arafat puppet Ahmed Qurei, that doesn't ring true.

More likely, it is due to the kingdom's understanding that regardless of the long-term consequences for Jordan of replacing the PLO, the long term consequences to the kingdom of allowing the PLO to remain empowered are worse.

In a poll released this week by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Palestinians ranked Israel's democratic system as number one among the possible systems of government they would like to emulate. Israel outranked the US, France and Germany. That is, far from viewing Israel as the "apartheid state" it is constantly accused of being by the Palestinians themselves, the Palestinians actually view Israel's democratic system as the system of governance they respect and value most.

The second pathology is that of the PLO, backed by Europe and the UN. In Geneva this week, under UN aegis and Swiss funding, the "international community" held a donors conference for UNRWA – the UN's self-appointed wing of the Arab war against Israel. UNRWA is the only UN refugee relief service that has dedicated itself to preventing relief to refugees. This it has done for over 50 years by preventing Arab refugees from the 1948 War of Independence and their foreign-born families from being integrated in the countries where they have lived for generations.

They are restricted instead to the UNRWA refugee camps, which serve as terrorist havens where these people are indoctrinated in the arts of jihad. There they are kept as a weapon for the destruction of Israel, ready for battle as their misery is eternalized.

Although the conference was convened by the UN, one UN member state that no doubt has a thing or two to say about UNRWA was conspicuously absent from the guest list. Israel was not invited to the conference.

During the conference, which was touted as "apolitical," attendees were regaled by propaganda film after propaganda film, all financed by the generous contribution of the Swiss government.

These films painted a picture of the IDF intentionally seeking to murder Palestinian children and nastily and gratuitously destroying the homes of innocent Palestinians in Jenin, Rafah and elsewhere. In short, it was a blood libel.

While Israel was contemptuously barred from the conference, the Palestinians were represented by a full complement of PLO spokesmen who handed out slick literature to the conference participants. According to an Israeli journalist who was present, this included, "precise maps of where and how the UNRWA camp residents could take back their homes [in Israel] from 1948."

Here we see what the Palestinian leadership is about. Its aim is to destroy Israel and its primary resource for doing so is the misery of its people. Yet there is a wrinkle in this tale.

Although the Palestinians are increasingly admitting that their lives under Arafat's PA have become untenable, they are in no rush to replace him. Opinion poll after opinion poll shows that Arafat is still the most popular leader, followed on now by convicted mass murderer Marwan Barghouti. How do we square this circle?

We can understand this seeming contradiction when we realize that, still today, in the absence of another viable option, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians continues to view the destruction of Israel as their primary goal. While they reasonably seek out ways to improve their lots in life, which necessarily involve combating terrorism and replacing terrorist leaders with regular bureaucrats and politicians, they are neither willing nor able to let go of their strategic goal of destroying Israel. They view propaganda conferences like the one in Geneva as a useful tool in the war even as here, on the ground, they are willing to admit that such libels do not reflect reality.

Sadly it is in the Israeli government where the third pathology lies. Rather than admit the failure of the PLO option and search for different, better options, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Deputy PM Ehud Olmert are telling us that our menu of policy choices is limited to those that have already failed abysmally in the 11 years since we went down the garden path of coexisting with the world's most accomplished terrorist organization.

These policy choices are the very ones that Israelis rejected overwhelmingly in the 2001 and 2003 elections. In 2003 we rejected the plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza that Sharon gleefully forced his cabinet to accept on Sunday.

In 2001 we overwhelmingly rejected the plan to divide our capital city, and Olmert this week has told us that that is next on the agenda. That is, rather than joining forces with and strengthening the Palestinian rank-and-file as it quietly seeks out realistic policy options to sidestep the failed Oslo process, Sharon is insisting, in a breathtaking display of stupidity and irrationality, that we must resuscitate it.

In so acting, our government is telling the Palestinian rank and file that it should continue to support its destructive leadership as it carries out its rhetorical, political and terrorist war against Israel, for Israel offers them no other option. So it is that while on the ground Palestinians quietly try to make do and hope for something better, publicly they vent hatred for Israel and allow their children to be indoctrinated to jihad, thus ensuring the war's continuation for at least another generation.

Our government follows this destructive line of policy consistently in rhetoric and action. Rather than advance our war aim of destroying the PLO, we call for cosmetic reform and pledge to contribute to the refurbishment of its militias while touting Egypt, the primary logistical base for Hamas, as our savior. In practice we call for strengthening the PLO by accepting their paradigm for destruction that involves the dislocation of Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel, thus presupposing there will never be a chance for peaceful coexistence, again to the detriment of healing Palestinian society of jihad intoxication.

Israel should be doing just the opposite. We should, in crafting our rhetorical and political strategies, be working to undermine Palestinian radicals and escape the failed ideas that brought us the Oslo war that has killed nearly 1,500 of our countrymen since 1994. We should be embracing our democracy and the collective wisdom of our people rather than pandering to the ignorant harpings of our radical Leftist media and the intellectually lazy and politically hostile elite both here and abroad. We should be encouraging the Palestinians to shake off the chokehold of the PLO and thinking constructively about what we the role we need for Jordan to play.

In acting as we are, Israel is behaving monstrously. Sharon and his colleagues are strengthening our enemy, harming potential friends and besmirching the good name of Israel's democracy, which is applauded in surprising quarters as the exemplary system it once was.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

"By the end of 2005, not one Jew will remain in Gaza."

Thus spake Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday morning.

Sharon's statement is troubling on many levels. First, the triumphalism: Why is the prime minister of the Jewish state acting as if it is a good thing to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Jews? It sounds like something Yasser Arafat would say. It is unseemly.

On a deeper level, the statement points to the fact that Sharon's plan to unilaterally retreat from Gaza is not simply a tactical military move. The plan represents a strategic worldview as well. The tactical aspect of the plan is clear enough for what that is worth. The thinking in the prime minister's office is that the IDF can defend the state just as well with our forces deployed outside of Gaza as when they are deployed inside of Gaza.

The strategic worldview is less apparent. It is not simply that settlements must be destroyed because, without the army, they will be overrun. Rather, the aim of making Gaza Judenrein by the end of next year is based on the perception that making certain areas off limits to Jews will accrue to the stability and security of the rest of the country.

This must be the case because, in truth, it is not at all clear that in order to secure Alei Sinai, Nissanit and Dugit – the three communities on the northern edge of Gaza – it is necessary for the IDF to be deployed in the area. These communities may well be able to be protected by the forces outside the area augmented by a well trained civil guard made up of their residents. The fact that such an option has not been discussed makes clear that Sharon perceives the Gaza withdrawal as somehow being in the best interest of the rest of the Jews in the country.

What is troubling about this view is that it has been repeatedly adopted and has repeatedly failed for the past seventy years.

In the 1930s, the British authorities in the Palestine Mandate prevailed on their king in Trans-Jordan, Abdullah I to bar Jews from purchasing land in his kingdom. Abdullah had initially welcomed the Jews to the land, believing, rightly that they would develop it to the benefit of all the people in the area. But in the aftermath of the Arab revolt of 1929, the British were of the firm opinion that to ensure public order, it was necessary to prevent the Jews from living in Trans-Jordan. This view did not stop the Arabs from revolting against the British again from 1936 to 1939. But its failure to bring stability did not stop the British from expanding their policy.

In 1940, as part of the implementation of the 1939 White Paper, the British set out to render the Zionist movement incapable of building a Jewish state in Palestine. They did this not only by barring desperate European Jews from entering the one place in the world that wanted them, thus sealing their fate. They did this by outlawing Jewish land purchases in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Northern Galilee and the Negev. The British move was again in response to the Arab revolt led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El Husseini.

This British policy, aimed at mollifying Husseini and his terrorist underlings, did not appease Husseini or dampen his appetite for war against the British. While pocketing the concession from his exile in Iraq Husseini fomented a Nazi-supported revolt against the British colonial authorities. From Baghdad Husseini fled to Berlin where he spent the rest of the war inciting the Arab world to make common cause with Hitler and fight the British.

When the British finally resolved to abandon the Palestine Mandate in 1947, the UN repeated the British policy of land partition, again with the hope that if the Jews were limited to a defined area of the land then the Arabs would accept the Jewish state. This view again was proved wrong in the 1948 War of Independence when five Arab armies invaded Israel with the intent of physically destroying the nascent state while fighting alongside Husseini's local terror brigades.

The fact that Judea, Samaria and Gaza, like east Jerusalem, were devoid of Jewish residents from 1949-1967 did not stop the Arabs from launching terror attacks against Israel throughout the ensuing years. Nor did the partition of the land dissuade Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan from fomenting the Six Day War in 1967.

This week, The New Yorker published a long article by Jeffrey Goldberg on the Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The gist of the article was, as the prime minister now intimates, that there is a direct correlation between the proximity of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and the speed and scope of the removal of Jews from Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Yet, in spite of Goldberg's best efforts to show this to be the case, the thesis was dispelled by two key voices. First, PLO lawyer, Michael Tarazi explained quite frankly that the notion of viewing the Jewish settlements in the territories as the core of the conflict was based on a misunderstanding of the conflict. In his words, "Stop scapegoating the settlers! I think you're [Goldberg] in denial, I really do. It's very typical. You want to find a reason for why all of this is happening, but you don't look at the practice of Zionism itself."

So, from the perspective of the PLO, as from the perspective of the Mufti and the Arab League in the past, the problem is not the size or scope of the Jewish state. It is its very existence.

Then there's Dror Etkes, the head of Peace Now's Settlement Watch group, which reports to the US embassy and to the EU about any building activities in the settlements. Etkes admitted to Goldberg that the removal of settlements will not bring peace. In his words, "Will a one-hundred percent pullout lead to a peaceful Israel and a peaceful Palestine? Now I'd have to say no. It wouldn't be an end of the conflict."

So even as Sharon is actively forcing his hesitant ministers to adopt the view that the settlements must be uprooted, history, PLO spokesmen and even Left-wing activists are telling us clearly that the removal of Jews from the territories will not bring peace.

The question then is what is actually gained by expelling Jews from Gaza and parts of Samaria as Sharon proposes? The actual direct consequence of Sharon's policy has less to do with prospects for peace than with internal Israeli political considerations. Stated bluntly, Sharon's move to distinguish the Jewish communities in the territories from those in the rest of the country serves to create a new political landscape in which the settlers are beyond the pale.

For years the delegitimization of the settlers has been the central aim of the Israeli Left. The need to do so was self-evident. The settlers make up the core of grassroots support for the Right-wing parties. Demonizing these citizens domestically as "obstacles to peace" transforms them from electoral assets into electoral burdens. Not wishing to be associated with those considered sub-par, the thinking has gone, Likud leaders like Sharon would be forced to adopt leftist policies.
 

The recent talk of Sharon creating a new political party comprised of his supporters in the Likud together with Labor and Shinui is the direct result of the adoption of the Leftist view of the settlers by Sharon. Why Sharon has taken this view remains something of a mystery. The rejection of the Left by Israelis in the last election would seem to indicate that such a move is unnecessary to secure Likud leadership of the country for the foreseeable future. Yet the fact that he has adopted this view is clear.

Aside from the tragedy that Sharon's new policy will inflict on settlers as well as Israeli society as a whole, the prime minister's decision has the military consequence of handing the Palestinians a great and unnecessary victory. It has also damaged the US-led war on global terrorism.

This was made abundantly clear by US President George W. Bush in his address before cadets at the US Air Force Academy on Wednesday. In the course of his speech, Bush laid out a clear vision for how the war against Islamic terror must be fought and won. Terrorists and their state sponsors must be actively targeted militarily and politically while democracy, the long-run antidote to jihad ideology which fuels the war, must be aggressively cultivated throughout the Arab world.

This view was comprehensive in every way except one. As applied to the Palestinian conflict with Israel, Bush applauded Sharon's plan to retreat from terrorists in Gaza and restated his view that a Palestinian state must be established in the territories. In a very real sense, the president's insistence on viewing the war against Israel as separate and distinct from the war against the US – to be appeased rather than fought – is to the war what locking the front door while leaving the back door open is to home protection.

It is impossible to blame Bush for his mistaken characterization of the war against Israel. The president and his advisers have been duped into believing that internal Israeli political wars have geostrategic significance when in fact they have none.

In point of fact, to win this war, the jihad against Israel must end the same way as the jihad against America: by force of arms and the spread of democracy. In spite of what the prime minister declares, it surely will not be won by expelling Jews from their homes.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.