PIG-LIPSTICKING:

Sharon tweaks withdrawal plan: Israel's leader is expected to seek cabinet approval Sunday for a Gaza plan that some say has changed little. (Ilene Prusher, 5/25/04, CS Monitor)

"It's basically a watered-down version to persuade some of the naysayers that, even if they couldn't go along with the last one, they will go along with the next one," says Mark Heller, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University. "Most of those who opposed did so on ideological grounds, being opposed to the concept of unilateral withdrawal, and not the specifics."

On the one hand, many Israelis view the military drive into Gaza Strip as justifiable, given the recent shooting deaths in Gaza of an Israeli mother and her four daughters and the deaths of 13 Israeli soldiers during attacks by Palestinian militant groups. But the stated goals of the operation have been inconsistent - from what the military says is a need to destroy tunnels to plans to widen the corridor between the Strip and Egypt.

In the hawkish view, Israel wanted to show Palestinians how Israel will respond to any attempt to use a Gaza Strip withdrawal to launch fresh attacks on Israel. Or, as Ze'ev Schiff, a military analyst with the Ha'aretz newspaper, puts it: "Rafah will be a reminder to them what will happen if they go on with the terror war after the withdrawal."

Israel may also have gone on the offensive to preempt Hamas claims that the army is leaving Gaza "under fire," as Hizbollah claimed in Lebanon.

The shifting and varied reasons to justify the Rafah operation have left many here baffled, and the new and improved disengagement plan according to an editorial in Ha'aretz, "arouses both concern and puzzlement."

Says Mr. Heller: "We always proceed on the assumption that someone up there in the leadership has a clear idea of what they're doing, and we just need to figure it out. But in this case, i'm not sure if they had a clear idea.

"It's the government's job to provide a clear explanation of things, a rationale, and in that they failed - so everyone's confused and we're reduced to guessing," he says.

What is clear is that Sharon's essential thinking remains unchanged, namely that Israel has no partner within the Palestinian leadership and should therefore withdraw from some 20 Jewish settlements in Gaza and certain parts of the West Bank.

Even folk who are contemptuous of the striped-pants diplomat set nonetheless tend to get obsessed with every little zig and zag in the road to a Palestinian state, but the destination is inevitable and imminent.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 24, 2004 9:52 PM