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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (103876)	7/2/2003 3:57:36 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

But lets take it three months at a time. For now all parties can go to the beach without fear. And thats a small step forward. It won't really be a truce, and it won't last three weeks. debka's take on Sharon's position: However, Sharon had reasons of his own for a course that so completely stumped the pundits and his own long-faithful right-wing following. His primary rationale was betrayed by another Israeli spokesman, Avi Dichter, director of Israel’s Shin Bet – the domestic security agency charged with detecting and stopping Palestinian suicide bombers in their tracks – in a rare speech he delivered at Tel Aviv University. In his analysis of the coming steps of the Washington-instigated peace track, Dichter warned that the moment of truth would arrive in about three weeks when the Palestinian prime minister and his internal security minister Mohammed Dahlan would be confronted with the obligation to gather illegal weapons from terrorists, especially Hamas. If the new Palestinian leaders fall at this first hurdle, Israel will not be able to hand any more Palestinian towns on the West Bank to Palestinian responsibility. “The entire diplomatic process will stumble and could even break down,” Dichter said. He went on to provide perspective on Israel’s place in the larger world scheme beyond the Israeli-Palestinian horizon. ”For Iran, Israel’s destruction is not just a pipedream but the subject of an active operational program. Teheran continually stokes up violence between the Palestinians and Israel, investing cash, arms and manpower in upgrading terrorist action, sending its spies over and fomenting anti-Israeli subversion. Today, Iran ranks as the number one terrorist state in the world. Israel finds it difficult to contend with the Iranian threat on its own,” Dichter said. None of this was news to Sharon. While imbued with outstanding military and intelligence prowess, Israel, he believes, is unequal to tackling declared foes on the scale and with the reach of Iran, Syria, Hizballah and al Qaeda and must depend on its foremost ally, the United States.. This dependence has a price – one that the Bush administration, which is not particularly liberal with its handouts, will not forego. In Sharon’s view, that price is Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state, which is the fee for American aid in eliminating the most intractable enemies of the Jewish state. He therefore makes sure his government punctiliously toes the diplomatic course set in Washington for the Middle East. The Israeli prime minister is also convinced that he alone can drive the country along this precarious route against all domestic opposition. debka.com