Weekly Commentary: Insider reveals shallowness of Sharon-Olmert retreat
thinking.

Aaron Lerner Date: 8 June 2006

The Sharon administration never took the time to seriously think through the
idea of retreating from the Gaza Strip and never took the time to ponder the
consequences of the retreat in order to learn from the experience. By the
same token, the Olmert administration has yet to take the time to seriously
think through Olmert's idea to carry out additional retreats.

No. This isn't the speculation of a critical outsider. They are the
shocking revelations of the outgoing head of the National Security Council
(NSC), Major General Giora Eiland, the man who planned the technical side of
the Gaza retreat for PM Sharon, in a 4 June interview in Haaretz.

"When I assumed my office, on 18 January, 2004," Eiland explained, "there
was only an amorphous term 'disengagement' from a speech in Herzliya. I
asked Sharon how much time I had to formulate a plan and he told me, four
months. But very quickly it became clear to me that [PM Sharon's adviser]
Dov Weissglas had already met with the Americans and committed us to a major
unilateral step both in Gaza and the West Bank.

"Immediately after, Sharon committed himself to the evacuation of 18
settlements in the Gaza Strip in an interview to [Haaretz's] Yoel Marcus,
and at that point the game was up. The planning process I had began blew
up."

The Haaretz editors were sure they had a big story.

They printed it prominently at the very top of the front page.

And while the radio broadcast media did give it some coverage during the
morning drive time, by noon it was already safely ensconced in the nation's
collective memory hole.

The same thing happened two days later when, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin told
in a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about the
massive increase in weapons smuggling that has taken in the wake of the Gaza
retreat.
According to Diskin, since the IDF left Gaza, in September 2005, there were
11 tons of TNT, three million bullets, 19,600 rifles, 1,600 pistols, 65 RPG
launchers, 430 RPGs and some 10 shoulder rocket launchers smuggled into Gaza
from Egypt - more than the total of weapons smuggled in from 1967 until
Israel abandoned control of the Egypt-Gaza border.

Will this cause PM Olmert to hesitate for a millisecond and think before he
continues to plunge forward with his retreat idea?

Probably not. Diskin's remarks are also now just old news.

For years Israel has suffered the consequences of a leadership with the
catastrophic combination of hubris and shallowness.

Their lack of depth handicaps their own policy making while their hubris
prevents them from seriously entertaining the possibility that they are
wrong.

Is there a chance of this changing?

Hard to know.

But with the costs of their cavalier approach becoming ever more apparent
there is the very real possibility that the terrible consequences of the
Gaza retreat will ultimately save us from implementing an even more
devastatingly dangerous retreat in the West Bank.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il