Re: The Mystery of Iniquity: Why Prime Ministers Pursue "Territory For Peace". See Conclusion following 21 points why it's not because of Security, Military nor Peace objectives....Disengagement from Religion is the Reason says Caroline Glick. By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

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On Mar 7, 2018 10:49 AM, "Paul Eidelberg" <foundation612.12@gmail.com> wrote:

 The Mystery of Iniquity: 

An Attempt to Understand Why Israeli Prime Ministers

Pursue the Futile and Fatal Policy of "Territory for Peace"

 

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

2003 (updated)

 

What … are the crimes of this objectionable government [of Israel]?  Does it steal, oppress the poor, take bribes…? The answer is the same as can be made about all governments—no and yes … But this no and yes do not matter. The crimes are deeper than venality or swindle. They are the crimes of character, the same crimes against which the Prophets bellowed three thousand years ago—in this same neighborhood: Egomania.

 

Ben Hecht, Perfidy

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A. Introduction

 

In his deceptively simple novel Billy Budd, Herman Melville finds only in holy writ the language – the "Mystery of Iniquity" – by which to fathom the book's sinister character John Claggart.

 

The year is 1797, and Claggart is the "Master-at-arms" of HMS Bellipotent. One of the impressed sailors on this ship is the innocent and childlike Billy Budd. Claggart, cunning, without conscience, and without cause, harbors an irrational hatred of Billy and plots his death – hence the Mystery of Iniquity.

 

Is this Mystery of Iniquity present in Israel? Is it manifested in the predominant policy of Israel's government – the policy of "land for peace," a policy pursued by the government regardless of which party is at the helm, and mindless of its futile and fatal consequences? Are the Israeli prime ministers who pursue this self-destructive policy entrapped in evil, overwhelmed by the Power and Mystery of Iniquity?   

 

If the leader of a nation is afflicted by the Mystery of Iniquity, he will have lost his free will. And if his successors persist in his Iniquity, the people will become so confused that they may fail to realize that their leaders are evil.  Instead, they will regard them as misguided or timid or intimidated.  But what in truth should Jews think when their leaders consort with Arab villains waving the banner of "land for peace"? What are we to say of Jews who ignore the warning of Isaiah by calling evil "good"?  Do they not remind you of the words of prophet Hosea: "[they] sow the wind and reap the whirlwind"?

 

Verily, they are entrapped in evil. They have taken the path of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost: "evil be thou my good." Or is their mania nothing more than a colossal and irreversible Egoism?

 

The Mystery of iniquity was manifested by Pharaoh, the Egyptian Despot portrayed in the Book of Exodus.  Despite one devastating plague after another, he refused to "let the Children of Israel go."  Better that his people perish than yield to stark reality and good counsel. And so, having inflicted so much suffering on the Jewish people – suffering of which all Egyptians were cognizant and culpable – God hardened his heart and reinforced his Egoism, so that his fall would be all the more devastating and known to despots near and far.

 

Exodus suggests that if a ruler willfully pursues an evil course of action and persists in doing so despite its baneful consequences, God will strengthen his will and make it impossible for him to repent or retreat from his destructive path.  The "Mystery of Iniquity" compels him, as it does every tyrant, to persist in a policy knowing it will lead to his and his people's ruin. A tyrant never repents.  He defies reality and even God. At this extreme, the "Mystery of Iniquity" may appear as a "death wish," but it's nothing more than the effect of a more fundamental cause – Evil.

 

Hence, those who claim that Israel's policy of "territory for peace" manifests a national death wish are dangerously mistaken. This policy has never won national support in any objectively formulated or non-tendentious poll.  Indeed, as concerns those who relentlessly pursue this policy, it would be more accurate and meaningful to say they have been afflicted not by a death wish but by the Mystery of Iniquity. Having abandoned their Jewish heritage, and having adhered to the folly of Shimon Peres, who said "There is nothing to learn from history," what better describes such sterile secularists than monumental Egotists animated by an all-powerful goal: to postpone their own demise by preventing the prolific religious community from gaining ascendency is Israel.

 

This, I shall show, was and remains the dominant motive of those who initiated and who have implemented the anti-Jewish policy of "territory for peace," a euphemism for wiping Israel off the map, the goal of the Left-wing [former] President Barack Obama and of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 

Was this the real goal of Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?[1] Was he not animated by this goal when, contrary to his party's overwhelming victory in the February 2003 election, he adopted the Left's policy of "unilateral disengagement? Did he not thereby become Labor's surrogate prime minister? Indeed, was there any other way by which he could become the leader of the Left and thereby become the Machiavellian founder of a new regime, a regime of uncontested Hebrew-speaking gentiles! 

 

This required him to implement Labor's plan to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, the cradle of Jewish civilization. This is what Oslo's seemingly irrational policy of "territory for peace" with the "Palestinian" disciples of Muhammad is all about: a facade for nullifying Judaism in Israel. This is why Sharon's long-time friend, MK Reuven Rivlin, said that Arik "has lost his mind," but had really succumbed to the Mystery of Iniquity.

 

Some pundits say that by embracing the Left's policy of "unilateral disengagement," Sharon had succumbed to the "politics of denial" which, for two decades, has turned a blind eye to the slaughter of thousands of Jews. Are we to believe that Sharon and his minions ignored 1,600 years of Islamic history, and that they willfully dismissed the mountain of evidence that Israel's enemies are fanatically committed to Israel's annihilation? To describe "unilateral disengagement" as symptomatic of a "politics of denial" is to reduce them to imbeciles and thus obscure the true nature and motives of Israel's ruling elites, who, from the very outset of Oslo, were committed to curtailing the demographic power of Israel's prolific Jewish community. No, these politicians were animated by the Mystery of Iniquity, and no language other than Evil can adequately describe the arrogance and egomania of these secularists.

 

This Evil became Ariel Sharon's good; it enslaved his soul, and that's what prompted Rivlin to say that Sharon had "lost his mind."  This madness is the result of the Mystery of Iniquity. This is what induced the Sharon government to expel 10,000 Jewish men, women, and children from their homes and flourishing communities in Gaza and northern Samaria and trash the hard work and beautiful accomplishments of these Jews by turning over their beloved land to Arab villains. 

   

What did Sharon convey to the public on February 13, 2005 when he told his cabinet, in defiance of freedom of speech: "Anyone who speaks or writes against the Disengagement Plan is guilty of incitement"? What is this other than despotic megalomania rooted in the Mystery of Iniquity?  It is the same megalomania that animated the Egyptian pharaoh portrayed in Exodus. (Of course, whereas Sharon was insanely committed to expelling Jews, his Egyptian counterpart insanely refused to let them go.) 

 

To show that Sharon was animated by the Mystery of Iniquity, it will be necessary to provide concrete evidence (a) that his Disengagement Plan had no military or strategic justification; (b) that he himself understood that Disengagement had no such justification; and (c) that it was known to endanger Israel's survival, hence, that it was intrinsically anti-Jewish and destructive of Judaism.

 

B. What Sharon Knew

 

1. June 12, 1992 – fifteen months before Oslo.  Yitzhak Shamir is Israel's Prime Minister.  He and his Likud party are campaigning in the national elections to take place later that month.  They are campaigning against Labor's policy of "territory for peace."  Accordingly, Ariel Sharon had this to say in Ma'ariv:  "If we cut and run, Gaza will be taken over by terror organizations.... Gaza's squares shall be transformed into launching platforms of Katyushas toward Ashkelon ... The only way to defeat terrorism is by controlling its bases."

 

2.  March 31, 1995 – eighteen months after Oslo. Yitzhak Rabin is Prime Minister and Shimon Peres is Foreign Minister.  They are implementing Labor's policy of "territory for peace."  Ariel Sharon had this to say in the Jerusalem Post in an article entitled "The Enemy Within": 

 

When I told the Knesset this week, "This government is against everything that is Jewish," several leftists were riled.  But for me, the Jewish cause transcends everything.  Israel is the Jewish state; Jerusalem is Jewish, and exclusively Jewish; Hebron is forever Jewish.

 

Anyone who aided Arafat in the Lebanon war is anti-Jewish.  Those on whose head lays the blood of the 134 Israeli citizens murdered since the Oslo Agreement are anti-Jewish….

 

Anyone planning to hand over Beit El and Shiloh is against Jews and Judaism.  Those who gave official status to non-Jews on the Temple Mount are anti-Jewish. 

 

The article implicitly denounces the late Yitzhak Rabin as anti-Jewish.  Shimon Peres is also disparaged as anti-Jewish.  Indeed, Peres was not only the architect of Oslo, but he also aided Arafat in the Lebanon war by promoting Peace Now's anti-war demonstrations.  Thus, virtually everything Sharon denounced as anti-Jewish applied to him ten-fold!

 

3.  Indeed, in the same March 31, 1995 article, Sharon warned that the (Rabin) government's plan to evacuate Gaza and various parts of Judea and Samaria would result in Jewish bloodshed: "Evacuating the IDF from Palestinian-populated areas will primarily affect the Jewish population in Jerusalem and the center of the country."  These areas, he explained, "aren't geared to defend themselves against terrorism."   He further warned, "Those who leave Jenin will find they have intensified terror … And those who dare to evacuate the IDF from Ramallah and Bethlehem shouldn't expect a day of tranquility in Jerusalem." Sharon thus foretold exactly what was to happen in Jerusalem and in the center of the country under his own government which, as of the date of his 1995 article, tolerated the murder of more than 1,000 Jews! But what better way to keep the Likud in power and facilitate his own ambitions?  

 

4. Nothing happened thereafter to change Sharon's military or security assessment.  Recall that in the February 2003 elections, he and his Likud party campaigned against Labor's unilateral withdrawal policy.  Moreover, throughout the next two years, while they were still on active duty, IDF Chief of General Staff. Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, IDF Chief of Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash, and Shin Bet Director, Avi Dichter, testified before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria would increase terrorist attacks against Israel.[2] (The same assessment was made by former Mossad heads Ephraim Halevy and Shabtai Shavit, former Intelligence Chief Shlomo Gazit, former IDF Deputy Chief of General Staff, Gen. Uzi Dayan, and former Air Force Commander Gen. Eitan Ben-Eliyahu.)

 

5.  The evidence of these experts clearly indicates that Sharon's Disengagement Plan was not based on any rational, strategic considerations.  What is more, given the evidence of these diverse experts – and they span the political spectrum – it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Sharon was indifferent to the loss of Jewish lives that would result from Israel's retreat from Gaza!  But this had long been obvious to the Jews in Gush Katif.  Despite the fact that the PLO, together with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, fired 6,000 mortars into that flourishing community, Sharon launched no major operation to stop those attacks. A prime minister seriously interested in protecting his people would have done so; and surely the Knesset, if it consisted of Jews who sincerely cared for the lives of their own people—or even if they were only mindful of their own interests vis-à-vis Israel's sworn enemies—would have voted no confidence if the Sharon government was derelict in its first and foremost duty, to protect the lives of the Jewish people (a duty grievously neglected by Sharon's successors). 

 

6. We are confronted here by a pandemic manifestation of the mystery of iniquity. Not only did Sharon betray the nation by adopting the Left's policy of "unilateral disengagement," and not only did he adopt this policy without consulting his military and intelligence officers, but to add insult to injury, when he at last convened a meeting with these experts, he informed them that the purpose of the meeting was not to discuss the merits of his withdrawal plan but how best to implement it—a display of egomania typical in Israel where politicians and judges can ignore public opinion and trample on the heritage of the Jewish people with impunity.

 

7. Of course, in defense of Sharon one might argue that his primary motive for adopting the Left's territorial withdrawal plan after the February 2003 election was narrowly political or diplomatic, that he did not want to alienate the United States. One may then say that it was not his intention to emasculate Judaism and or forestall the ascendancy of the religious community by yielding Gaza and Israel's heartland, Judea and Samaria, to the Arabs for peace. We shall presently see, however, that this "politically correct" interpretation obscures strategic facts about Gaza and, above all, the "Mystery of Iniquity" in which Israel is entrapped.

 

8.  First, we must set forth specific and iron-clad evidence that Sharon's Disengagement Plan was not based on military or strategic considerations.  Consider, therefore, the following facts:

 

a. Disengagement from the Gaza Strip could not but impair intelligence, deterrence, pre-emption, and prevention of terrorist attacks. Disengagement would therefore increase smuggling and manufacturing of terrorist weaponry, terrorist maneuverability, recruitment, and training.  The IDF withdrawal from Gaza in 1994 (following the 1993 Oslo Agreement) created the largest terrorist base in the world, led by Palestinian graduates of terrorist camps in Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Libya and Tunisia.

 

b. The 1995 Disengagement from Bethlehem and Beit Jallah facilitated a takeover by Fatah terrorists, which turned Jerusalem's Gilo community into a terrorist firing range. 

 

c. The July 2000 Disengagement from Southern Lebanon exposed Haifa to Hezbollah missiles (which numbered more than 10,000), propelled Hezbollah from a local to regional stature, and further inflamed Palestinian terrorism in Gaza and the "West Bank," i.e., Judea and Samaria.

 

d. IDF re-engagement in Gaza and Judea and Samaria in 2004 accounted for a 70 percent reduction of terrorism. 

 

e. Disengagement placed Ashkelon's power station, Ashdod's port, fuel depots, and desalination plant within range of terrorist missiles. Upgraded missiles would transform Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion Airport, Netanya, Ra'anana, and Hadera (with its major power station) into potential missile range.

 

9. For these and other reasons,[3] former Deputy IDF Intelligence Chief, Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror has written: "The Israeli government has not succeeded in producing a single serious argument that can refute objections [to Disengagement] and justify the grave step that it is taking."[4] In a July 23, 2005 interview with WorldNetDaily.Com, Amidror said Sharon's plan to evacuate Jewish communities from Gaza and parts of the West Bank is a "disastrous" military move and a major victory for terrorism:  

 

a. There is no military advantage to leaving Gaza. You lose control on the ground, the ability to conduct intelligence operations and to stage ground efforts into Gaza City and Khan Yunis. You let Hamas and Islamic Jihad have a safe haven from which to launch terrorist actions and in which to expand their terror apparatus.

 

b. The Palestinians understand this retreat is due to the great successes of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. [On July 26, Palestinian journalists were urged to take part in celebrations over the Israeli "retreat" from Gaza and northern "West Bank."] ,,, Leaving Gaza [said Amidror] is giving in to terrorism. For the long run and for the whole process of fighting terrorism in Israel and around the world, the Gaza retreat is a huge mistake.

 

10.  As for those who held that Gaza must be vacated for reasons of demography, specifically, that if the 1.2 million Arabs in the area secure the right to vote, Israel's Jewish character would be threatened—this, said Amidror, "is pure nonsense."  "No one here has ever recommended annexing Gaza into Israel. In fact, there is a fence between the two. There is no immigration from Gaza into Israel. The demographic argument doesn't hold water." 

 

11.  It was nonetheless said that Disengagement will eventually serve the cause of peace.  There was and is absolutely no evidence for this expectation.  Here let us consult former IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon.  In a June 9, 2005 interview with Ha'aretz, Ya'alon remarked that despite their losses and the disintegration of their social fabric during the current war,

 

a. The Palestinians are still thinking in terms of the [PLO's] phased doctrine [for Israel's destruction]. The most significant development in this regard is the Cairo agreement between Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas] and Hamas. What Abu Mazen said in reference to this agreement shows that he has not given up the right of return [of four million Arab "refugees" to Israel]. And this is not a symbolic right of return but the right of return as a claim to be realized: to return to the houses, to return to the villages. The implication of this is that there will not be a Jewish state here.

 

b. Over the years, the Palestinians have been trying to show us that territory we leave becomes quiet…. You left Gaza? You get quiet. You will leave Judea and Samaria? You will get quiet. Leave Tel Aviv and things will be completely quiet.

 

Ya'alon quickly added, however, that the Arabs will not forgo suicide bombings. "The suicide bombings and the Qassam rockets have something in common: they bypass the IDF. They are means of bypassing Israeli military might and striking at the civilian society."  To Ya'alon, "it is clear as day … if we do not give the Palestinians more and more, there will be a violent outburst. It will begin in Judea and Samaria."  The cities on the border of the West Bank will be in the situation of the Gaza settlements.  Kfar Sava's situation will be that of Sderot, as will Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. "There will be suicide bombings wherever they can perpetrate them."

 

12.  Asked whether there is a high probability of the eruption of a third intifada? Ya'alon answered: "It is not an intifada. We have to stop calling it an intifada. It is a war."

 

13. The preceding evidence clearly indicates that there was and is no prospect of peace within the foreseeable future. As Ya'alon admitted, the values of the Palestinians would have to undergo a profound change. To be more precise, the Arabs would have to renounce the ethos of Jihad, which is tantamount to lobotomizing their historical memory. Unilateral disengagement will certainly not afflict the Arabs with historical amnesia. Sharon was not deceiving himself in this matter.

 

14. On August 12, 2004, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas presided over a huge celebration in Gaza City where he declared: "Today we are celebrating the liberation of Gaza and the northern West Bank; tomorrow we will celebrate the liberation of Jerusalem."[5] Moreover, senior PA officials disclosed that "the Palestinian Authority is planning to move thousands of PLO fighters from Lebanon to the Gaza Strip after the disengagement."

 

15.  Even the left-wing Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies affiliated with Tel Aviv University predicted that disengagement would very likely lead to an eruption of Arab terrorism in the West Bank and to exacerbate political, economic, and social chaos among Palestinians:  "Gaza will at least serve as a training area and as the terrorists' rear echelon and support base for weapons smuggling and local production; and will offer safe harbor for wanted terrorists and senior commanders."[6]

 

16.  The Jaffee Center report merely echoed the strategic assessments of IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon and Shin Bet Director Avi Dichter.  All this was known to Ariel Sharon.

 

17.  Even though his Disengagement Plan came as a surprise to the Bush administration, Sharon told reporters that he had agreed to pull soldiers and settlers from Gaza because of assurances from President Bush that large settlements in the West Bank would remain part of the Jewish state.  He then proceeded to read these assurances into Mr. Bush's letter of April 14, 2004, which ostensibly was written in response to the Disengagement Plan.  Be this as it may, the letter declared: "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population 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." This noncommittal statement was portrayed by Sharon as an unprecedented diplomatic victory.  However, the letter makes it crystal clear that "The United States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations" between the parties.  Moreover, there is not a single reference in the letter to settlements.  Indeed, the U.S. promptly and repeatedly denied Sharon's claim that he had reached an agreement with Bush that Israel would retain settlements in the West Bank, 

 

18.  Sharon therefore knew that Israel would gain nothing from his Disengagement Plan.  To the contrary, Israel would be under greater pressure to make additional unilateral concessions.  Hence one may conclude that, just as there was no military or strategic justification for Sharon's Disengagement Plan, so there was no political or diplomatic justification.  To this extent the Disengagement Plan was irrational and confirms our thesis about the Mystery of Iniquity, which impels those afflicted by this malady to behave in defiance of reason and experience. 

 

19.  But to clinch the argument that Sharon acted in defiance of logic as well as of military, political, and diplomatic experience, consider his behavior vis-à-vis Egypt:  

 

a. Sharon knew – as did his cohorts – that Egypt, year after year, tolerated, if it did not also supply, massive arms into Gaza through the Philadelphi Corridor, which the IDF abandoned via the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

 

b. Sharon knew that Egypt, threatened by no country, was devoting at least 25% of its GDP to weapons procurement and development, while its people languished in abject poverty.

 

c. Sharon knew that Egypt, in violation of its March 1979 peace treaty with Israel, became the epicenter for the propagation of anti-Semitism throughout the Arab world.

 

20.  Despite his knowledge of Egypt's anti-Israel acts and anti-Semitic propaganda, Sharon invited Egypt to deploy 750 forces along the Philadelphi Corridor—as if Cairo could be trusted to block the infiltration of terrorists and weaponry into Gaza after the IDF's departure!  Evident here is not simply a "politics of denial," but a politics rooted in the Mystery of Iniquity.

 

21.  I will go even further.  The world has been given over to Evil, most conspicuously the Evil generated by the Islamic ethos of Jihad.  Not only is Israel's ruling elites incapable of coping with this evil, but they themselves have been tainted by mendacity by consorting with the masters of mendacity – the Arab masters of taqiyya.  Having dignified villains like Yasser Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas who, to this day exalts Arab suicide bombers, these Israeli politicians have been tainted by evil and have thus become complicit in the murder of their own people, leaving themselves trapped in the Mystery of Iniquity. 

 

C.  Conclusion

1. Objectively as well as subjectively, Sharon's Disengagement Plan was intended as a Disengagement from Judaism.  Caroline Glick confirmed this in her article "Scorched-earth Kulturkampf" (Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2005). Referring to the policy positions of Ha'aretz and Ma'ariv, she first declared:  "The rationale for the Left's support of Sharon's plan was laid bare" in this Ha'aretz editorial:

 

The disengagement of Israeli policy from its religious fuel is the real disengagement currently on the agenda…. On the day after the disengagement, religious Zionism's status will be different … The real question is not how many mortar shells will fall, or who will guard the Philadelphi route, or whether the Palestinians will dance on the roofs of Ganei Tal.  The real question is who sets the national agenda.

 

Glick then cites Ma'ariv's senior commentator Dan Margolit, who, she points out, would place quotas on the number of religious Jews allowed to serve as officers in the IDF.  This would inevitably diminish the influence of religious Jews on the course and character of the state, especially in view of the projected abandonment of Judea and Samaria to achieve the Sharon goal of a Palestinian state.  (This goal was publically endorsed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ian University on June 14, 2009.)

 

4. Evident here is the anti-religious motive underlying Sharon's explicit adoption in December 2003 of the Left's policy of "territory for peace."  The real motive of that policy was not the desire for peace.  Had that been the motive, why would the Left persist in this policy after ten years of terrorism and 10,000 Jewish casualties?  Some leftists may live in denial, but this is not true of Israel's political and judicial elites.  Let's go to the heart of the matter: Jewish demographics.

 

5.  The Haredim have 7.5 children per family, in contrast to 3.4 for Modern Orthodox, 2.7 for the national average and traditional Jews, and 1.6 for secularists.  Given this data, the Left knows it is doomed to political oblivion.  This is why it has eased the entry into Israel of gentiles, relaxed the conversion and citizenship laws, emasculated the rabbinate, legitimized pornography and homosexuality, and, more generally, advocates Israel's transformation into "a state of its citizens."  By now it should be obvious that the Left wants to destroy Judaism in this country, which is why it has pursued the policy of "territory for peace" and "unilateral disengagement."  Driven by the Mystery of Iniquity, the Left persists in its self-destructive goal: to truncate the Land of Israel and thereby truncate and eventually eviscerate the collective memory of the Jewish people. Ariel Sharon had simply become the Left's surrogate prime minister.

 

6.  Israel's political and judicial elites have succumbed to Evil, which they conceal by the mantras of "peace" and "democracy."  In essence, this was foreseen by the prophets and sages of Israel.[7] This should encourage Jews about their final redemption of which the prophets and sages also speak, and which has ever inspired the indomitable courage and perseverance of the Jewish people.☼ 

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[1] For a related study, see Paul Eidelberg, "A Machiavellian Analysis of Ariel Sharon," Nativ: A Journal of Politics and the Arts (September, 2004).

[2] In his testimony before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on January 5, 2005, Dichter described some threats inherent in carrying out Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull the IDF out of the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. "In a situation where Israel is not in control of the Philadelphi corridor [which separates Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula]," Dichter warned, "terrorists arriving from Lebanon are liable to infiltrate through it into the Gaza Strip and there is the distinct possibility that in a short while the Gaza Strip will turn into south Lebanon." Dichter also cautioned that the current "trickle" of arms smuggling through the corridor is liable to turn into a "river." As to northern Samaria, Dichter said that "Samaria is an area with terrorist potential that already proved itself in the past. Therefore nothing should surprise us. If we evacuate the area and turn it into Area A, under complete Palestinian security control, we are liable to get an area there that operates by the Gaza model." According to Dichter, during the six months following the cabinet approval of the disengagement plan in June 2004, the number of Kassam rockets fired from Gaza nearly doubled.  For a more detailed report, see The Jerusalem Post, January 6, 2005, pp. 3, 9.

[3] It was estimated that Disengagement will cost more than two billion dollars (to say nothing of the additional cost of defending the country against a predicted increase in terrorists attacks.)  The fruitless expenditure of this enormous sum will have dire social, economic, and military consequences.

[4] Yaakov Amidror, "Unilateral Withdrawal: A Security Error of Historical Magnitude," Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, Vol. 7, No. 3, December 2004.

[5] Jerusalem Post, August 14, 2004, p. 1.

[6] Ibid., p. 2.

[7] See for example, Isaiah 28:14-18; the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a; The Zohar, 7b.

 

 

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