<the minute the Israelis move back or make any concession, some Palestinian group immediately punishes the move by blowing up some more Israelis>
From the viewpoint of the Palestinians, the Israelis have never "moved back or made any concession".
Try, for a moment, to look at it from the viewpoint of a Palestinian. If only to understand your enemy.
Let's say you lived in a village in Samaria, in 1967. The Israeli tanks roll through your town. Half the population moves east of the Jordan. A few days later, a checkpoint is established, which means a 6-hour wait every time you want to go shopping in Ramallah. A few years later, a few mobile homes with Jewish settlers, are set up on a hilltop overlooking your town. The Jewish town grows, annexing your orchards. You aren't allowed to dig new wells, while the new Jewish town has swimming pools in half the back yards. The Jewish town annexes an adjacent hilltop, and another group of homes goes up. More land is taken. You protest peacefully, protest to all the Israeli government offices, and you are ignored. Since peaceful protest doesn't work, you start violent protest. Every protest is met with bullets, tanks, and helicopter gunships. The Israeli government announces a settlement halt. Later, an illegal settlement is set up one night, by a group of violent fundamentalist Jews. The Israeli government makes half-hearted efforts to stop the new illegal settlement. But the settlement stays, and later gets electricity and other utilities, funded by the government, even though the settlement is still illegal. By now, most of the land in the area is controlled by Jewish settlements, or military outposts. You decide the only way to make the Jews go away, is to hurt them, and the only way you can hurt them, is suicide bombing.
The Palestinians are convinced Israel intends on continuing the colonization, until they hold all the land. A temporary removal of roadblocks, or military outposts, isn't going to convince them. Only a pullback of the settlements will do that.
Sharon could make a list of settlements that he knows will be given back, in any conceivable peace treaty. These are the small, isolated settlements, difficult to defend, that add nothing to Israeli security. Abandon those settlements, unilaterally. That would be a real "move back". |
