Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has instructed the IDF GOC Central Command Yehuda Fuchs to sign a decree that could allow Jewish residency in the former settlement of Homesh in northern Samaria thus fully implementing a controversial measure to lift the restrictions under the 2005 Gaza Disengagement Law, Israel Hayom has learned.

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Entry to Homesh, as well as three other former settlements in northern Samaria, was previously illegal under the 2005 Gaza Disengagement Law, which was repealed by the Knesset in mid-March.

Gallant's decision is one of major security and political significance that has prompted the IDF to prepare for boosting forces in Homesh and mobilizing forces to protect civilians who will now be legally allowed to visit the area after almost 20 years. The matter is expected to lead to further tensions with the Biden administration, which already in March criticized Israel for repealing the disengagement law.

Together with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Gallant area also considering a measure that would give official legal status to the yeshiva that was recently established in the former community without state sanction. The yeshiva currently sits on contested land, but it could get a stamp of approval if a plan to relocate it to a plot of state land nearby is finalized.

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In response to a petition by Palestinians living near the Samaria settlement of Eli, the government has promised the High Court of Justice that within three years, two buildings in the community's Naot Ilan neighborhood will be evacuated, Israel Hayom has learned.

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The government's commitment is a weighty one, as Eli is a long-standing settlement, rather than a recently-erected outpost, and the buildings in question were constructed roughly a decade ago and are family homes.

The government made its promise to the High Court at the start of this week as part of a response to the Palestinians' petition, which was filed in 2011 against 20 buildings in Eli.

Eli was founded some 30 years ago through a cabinet decision and without any orderly planning process. This past year, an expedited process has regulated the status of nearly all the buildings in the community, including most of the structures mentioned in the petition.

Years ago, a team from the IDF's Civil Administration mapped the boundaries of Eli and determined that the two buildings slated for evacuation did not fall within the bounds of the state-owned lands, and therefore could not be regulated.

Since then, the government has repeatedly asked the High Court to find a solution to the issue and has avoided making any decision about evacuating the two buildings. The regulation team appointed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finished its work in the summer of 2020, without making any recommendation for the future of the buildings, throwing the hot potato into the lap of the current government.

The High Court requested updates on the matter, but over the last eight months, the government has repeatedly postponed any formal messages about the situation. This week, after the judges demanded to be informed about the status of the buildings, the government submitted a response that said, "After another review of the issue and despite the instructions from the political leadership to examine ways of regulating the buildings, no real possibility of doing so has been found. The government intends to evacuate these two buildings."

Because the buildings are home to a number of families for whom alternate housing must be found, the government has asked the High Court for an extension of three years to the evacuation date.

Heads of the Land of Israel Lobby in the Knesset, MKs Yoav Kisch and Orit Strock, said, "This week, the government informed the High Court of Justice that it agrees to demolish the homes of four families in Eli. This is a horrifying, shocking announcement."

"Rather than preventing the destruction of Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria, the government is busy regulating the illegal construction crimes in the Bedouin sector. This is a badge of shame for the government, which is freezing construction, as well as going back on all its promises to regulate [settlements] and also demolishing Jews' homes," Strock and Kisch said.

Binyamin Regional Council head Yisrael Gantz said, "We are surprised that the government is falling in line with the Arab petitioners and announcing that it will, heaven forbid, demolish two homes where families have been living for years, which are part of a living, vibrant neighborhood.

"Razing a home whose status was legal and which a new review by the Civil Administration left outside the settlement's borders is a new low in crimes against settlement in Judea and Samaria. These two homes are just a preview. We have hundreds of homes with similar status in the Binyamin settlements and thousands throughout the settlements as a whole that suddenly found themselves outside the new 'blue lines' drawn in the Civil Administration's work. No normal country would demolish homes in a situation like this," Gantz said.

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Sixteen years have passed since Israel's 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and to mark the occasion, the Gush Katif Heritage Center is hosting a conference in Jerusalem.

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The conference, to be held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, will include a documentary theater production by spoken word artist Zvia Margaliot based upon texts written during the disengagement.

One portion of the performance centers on a dialogue between an IDF soldier's mental checklist in preparation for the disengagement and a speech delivered by a resident of Neve Dekalim to prepare his friends for the nonviolent struggle against the community's eviction.

"I am not from Gush Katif, I live in Jerusalem. But like every other national religious person, I was involved in the struggle against the disengagement. Nevertheless, until I had kids, I wasn't qualified to understand what they went through over there, the abyss people reached," Margaliot said.

Margaliot, who has competed in poetry slam competitions, said: "Four years ago, the Gush Katif Center contacted me, and I did a spoken-word piece for them about the disengagement. Later, I proposed documentary theater. It has power. Three pieces I wrote and directed will be shown at the conference. One of them is based on the personal diary of an 18-year-old young woman who documented her emotions during the disengagement."

Margaliot said it was emotionally difficult to read the stories of people who were forced to leave their homes.

"This is a story that has influence even 16 years later," she said. "Families have fallen apart, some people became ill, got divorced. I also know people who say they lost their sanity. It's important to me, through this performance, to expose the influence the disengagement had on people, still today. The lack of trust in the judicial system among members of this public is the result of the disengagement. There are all kinds of things that need to be talked about," she said.

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It was during Operation Cast Lead in December 2008. The Israeli Embassy in Britain was surrounded by demonstrators, some of whom became violent. They climbed the fence, threw Molotov cocktails and rocks. Tension was running so high that Yuval Diskin, then-head of the Shin Bet security agency, which is in charge of security at Israel's embassies and consulates abroad, recommended closing all diplomatic missions to keep their staffs safe.

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Ron Prosor, who was serving as Israeli Ambassador to Britain at the time, rejected the idea.

"No embassy will close on my watch and under my command," he told Diskin. "As far as I'm concerned, they can take the staff out in APCs," he added. The embassy continued to operate. A few days later, clad in a flak jacket, Prosor took part in a pro-Israel demonstration held by the local Jewish community.

This story, which does not appear in Prosor's new book Undiplomatically Speaking (Yedioth Books, Hebrew, English translation scheduled for 2022) reflects the approach of one of Israel's outstanding diplomats of the past few decades: initiative, offense, standing up for Israel's national honor and battling for the justness of Israel's path on all fronts. It should be required reading for any Israeli who wants to understand what is happening to us in the international arena.

In the book, Prosor sums up 30 years at the heart of diplomatic activity. From the secret contacts he helped build with the Gulf states to dealing with the global media in London and the ceaseless struggle against the UN's hypocrisy and triple standards. The book includes anecdotes, including one time when Prosor noticed an unusually unattractive woman sitting next to him on a flight. On second glance, it turned out that "she" was none other than then-head of the Mossad Meir Dagan.

Prosor sits down with Israel Hayom to discuss the new governments in Israel and the US.

Q: Will you briefly explain the importance of diplomatic activity?

"The security aspect is important, of course, but it's not the whole picture. Diplomatic context and activity integrates other vital interests. For example, when [former] Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said in 2012 that 'the peace treaties with Israel were forced on Egypt,' it was a hint that he wanted to cancel them. It took a lot of hard diplomatic work with the Americans to make him not repeat that statement, and of course, not cancel them.

"Or, for example, the affairs of the deal pushed by the defense establishment to sell Falcon aircraft to China against the recommendations of the diplomatic echelon, which knew how strongly the Americans objected to it. Then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was forced to cancel the deal and Israel paid a $300 million fine. We lost a few billions that could have gone to our defense industries but gained billions in American aid, and especially the continued alliance with the US, which is a cornerstone of our relations."

Q: Still, the qualities you need in a diplomat today aren't what were taught in the Foreign Ministry training in the 1980s.

"True. A 21st century diplomat isn't a lone actor or his country's sole representative. International relations are no longer just between governments, but rest on civil society. Diplomacy has undergone a change. A good diplomat today needs to seek out every opportunity to take the initiative, locate coalitions that will strengthen his options, and present his stance. A good diplomat is one who takes the initiative and thinks outside the box. Diplomatic war is being waged against Israel that no other country in the world is subject to. Every Israeli diplomatic mission is a frontline command center. These forward positions are often fighting without ammunition."

Q: There has been criticism that former PM Netanyahu hurt relations with the Democratic Party that is now in power in the US. Does the fact that Israel now has a new government, under a right-winger like PM Naftali Bennett, help turn over a new leaf with them?

"Every system, certainly a political one, needs to undergo change from time to time and bring in new people who will espouse a new approach and new possibilities. The new blood now in power here, and the refreshing approach of the government and its leader, are giving them opportunities to tighten the bonds between Jerusalem and Washington and pave a new way forward for the two countries."

In his book, Prosor describes UN Resolution 2334, which defined Israeli control over Judea and Samaria, including east Jerusalem, as violations of international law, as a hit below the belt. Since it was passed, led by former President Obama at the end of his administration, Israel's problems with the Democrats have only worsened.

""We need to take a lot more intensive action when it comes to the Black and Hispanic communities, and the entire progressive public in the US in general," Prosor says. "We need to invest in that. It's a battle. We have something to say and we can and should present our positions. I think that more can be done to stop this wave."

Q: Do you support criticism of Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, who was ambassador to the US while Netanyahu was prime minister, when it comes to losing Democratic support?

"First of all, it must be said that there are many Democrats who support us. True, there are some who don't, but they're still a minority, even if they're a vocal one. The role of a prime minister is to form an intimate relationship with US presidents. Ties like these existed in the past, even when there were disagreements. So I think that better work should have been done with the Democrats, and they [Netanyahu and Dermer] bear some of the responsibility. But as I say in the book, this doesn't detract from Dermer's historic successes as ambassador, first and foremost the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords. He is one of the most knowledgeable people about Israel-US relations in the diplomatic service, and he has paid a personal price more than once for his total loyalty to Netanyahu."

Prosor, the son of a diplomat, grew up in the foreign service. In his last diplomatic posting, he served as Israeli ambassador to the UN from 2011-2015. Prior to that, his career took him to Britain, Washington, and Switzerland. He experienced first-hand historic processes and events such as secret meetings with Arab leaders, or the evacuation of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on 9/11.

He was in the room when the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip was implemented. "The idea was for the Palestinians to take charge of their own fate," he says. "Our assumptions did not live up to reality. We were mistaken when we assumed that the Arab states would want to help build Gaza, or when we hoped that the Palestinians would seize the opportunity to develop Gaza. We were wrong when we thought that Palestinians public would appreciate a voluntary withdrawal, from a position of power. For Hamas, the Israeli move was a retreat of weakness that confirmed that they could and should continue their violent ways," he says.

Prosor also had his eyes opened about supposedly enlightened European countries. "We thought that the nations of the world would look favorably on the Israeli step and change to some degree their anti-Israel paradigm. So, we thought it."

His disappointment in western democracies that supposedly embrace liberal values, is the main message of both the book and the interview.

"The international community doesn't have a double standard, it has a triple one. One for most countries in the world that aren't democratic, from which nothing is expected. The second for the democracies. But Israel is held up to a third and special standard. It's a unique demand, one that is so high it can't be met," he says.

Q: For example?

"If rockets are fired at Israel, they say Israel has the right to defend itself. But then they don't really allow you to strike at the terrorists. You do everything with one hand tied behind your back, with a threat hovering overhead that your soldiers and officers will be arrested if they leave the country. Or take Hezbollah's tunnels – a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions, but the UNSC is silent.

"Or UNIFIL, who are in Lebanon on behalf of the UN and regularly report Israeli flights in Lebanese airspace. But like the three monkeys, they never notice even a single one of Hezbollah's ceasefire violations. I can give you a long list of things that are just unbelievable, that only Israel is subject to."

When Prosor discusses other standards to which Israel is held, he links them to "western European hypocrisy."

"There are three layers. The first layer is latent, inherent antisemitism. That's part of Europe's DNA. The second layer is the double guilt complex. Some of the system is flagellating itself for what it did to the Jews in the Holocaust and about colonialism. Europe projects these guilty feelings on Israel. The third layer has to do with discrepancies of perception. Like Europe, Israel embraces democratic, pluralistic ideals. But when it comes to the nation state, which Israel supports and the Europeans have reservations about, there is a clash. There is also a clash about the values of individual liberty and national security."

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"When UNESCO votes in favor of a resolution declaring that the Jewish people has no ties to the Western Wall and the Old City of Jerusalem – it's simply inconceivable," Prosor says.

Q: While you were at the UN you refused to accept the situation.

"Right. When I realized what was happening in that arena, my instructions to the mission were clear. We were not going to leave any attack unanswered. The time was over when the Israeli diplomat would note down what was said in the meeting and report it to Jerusalem. I demanded that everyone respond on the spot, and go on the offensive. With wit, with sarcasm, but to make them pay a price – and if possible, do so in the language of a nation attacking us. We had several of Arabic speakers in the mission, and they embarrassed Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Syria, as well as other Arab countries, more than once."

Q: When it comes to Arab countries, you argue in the book that there is no peace between Israel and Jordan or Egypt.

"I define our relations with those two countries as a state of non-military fighting. Of course, there are security ties, and they are very important. But what is needed there, which is the basis for our relations with the Gulf countries, is contact between the peoples, interpersonal contact. Tourism, academia, youth exchanges, business – this is all a fabric that needs to be woven over time."

Q: Jordan and Egypt aren't interested.

"A way must be found so it's worth their while. We can't give up."

Q: Why does national honor matter?

"We tend to ascribe patriotic significance to that concept, but national honor has both domestic and foreign significance. When you apologize for a just act, like stopping the Marmara flotilla for example, what message does that send to the soldiers and commanders who fought there? In international terms, what people remember is 'Israel apologized.'"

Q: Obama demanded the apology.

"In hindsight, I think that Israel shouldn't have apologized."

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No one will tell the Jewish people where they can live, Jonathan Pollard said Thursday, speaking at this year's Sovereignty Youth conference, which opened Thursday at the Oz VeGaon Nature Preserve in Gush Etzion.

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The conference launched an official initiative to expand the borders of Jerusalem to include Mevasseret Zion, Gush Etzion, Maaleh Adumim, and some settlements in the Binyamin Regional Council.

"We received this land from God, not from the United States, not from the British, not from the United Nations, but from God. There is no need for us to explain our belief that this land is ours. No one will tell us where to live. The days of the ghetto have ended. We are a free Jewish people," Pollard said, adding that no American president would tell the Jewish people where they were allowed or not allowed to live.

Pollard said that Prime Minister-designate Naftali Bennett "must take action to defend our honor in the future," and urged conference participants to demand that Israel sovereignty over the four communities in northern Samaria that were evacuated as part of the 2005 disengagement plan be restored.

Pollard also called for more construction throughout Area C, due to "the need to expand Jerusalem."

"Our objective is to ensure a Jewish majority and prevent the isolation of the city," which he said was the goal of the Biden administration.

Touching on Israel's annual flag march, which was cancelled on Jerusalem Day due to escalating tensions in Jerusalem and postponed again after being pushed to June 10, Pollard asked, "Where will it end?"

"Security officials have no problem seeing Arabs with Palestinian flags on the Temple Mount … and that's OK? They are in our capital with Hamas flags. We must change our mentality," he said.

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Speaking to Israel Hayom, Olmert says that "In the cabinet, we were supposed to vote on the disengagement plan. I get a telephone call from Arik [Sharon]. I was in the North, and Arik says to me, 'Listen. I'm thinking of changing the whole disengagement. I'll pull out of five settlements around Gaza.' I asked him, 'What?' and Arik says, 'I can't anymore. I'm sick of this.'"

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Q: What was he sick of?

Olmert: "The pressure on him from inside the Likud camp was unbearable. I asked him, 'Arik – will you have a majority for five settlements?' and he answered, 'I think so.'

"I told him: 'Don't be so sure. I, for example, won't vote for that. I won't make a fool of myself. We set up a plan, and now to pull out of only five settlements? That's ridiculous. I won't play any part in it.' And Arik told me: 'Come to the ranch, and we'll talk.'"

Olmert says he went to visit Sharon's ranch, where he told the prime minister he could not cave to the anti-disengagement pressure.

Olmert says he told Sharon he must not "give in to this gang of nothings," that he had opted for a historic move that was the "right thing to do," and he had to stick to it.

According to Olmert, he told Sharon: "If you pull back now, you'll just bring on more pressure. Two weeks from now, you'll come to a faction meeting and the back benches will rise up against you. They smell weakness."

Olmert says that Sharon's son Gilad said, "Ehud is right."

Sharon was convinced. He called cabinet secretary Israel Maimon and instructed him to pull Sharon's revised plan to raze only five settlements, and work according to the original plan that would encompass all the settlements in Gush Katif, as well as four in northern Samaria.

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As the years passed, a few reports were published about the second stage of the disengagement that Sharon had planned or considered for Judea and Samaria. In his final months as prime minister, prior to suffering a stroke that left him comatose, Sharon denied these reports.

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Now new details are emerging that put these denials in a different light, especially when it comes to tactics. "Disengagement II," the "Realignment Plan" that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attempted to implement during his time in office, was cooked up under Sharon. Sometimes, things were done with his explicit approval, and sometimes without any response, but Sharon knew everything. He certainly didn't forbid work on the matter.

In December 2005, three months after the disengagement plan was complete, Sharon and then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a committee under the leadership of the director general of the Justice Ministry, Aharon Abramovich. It was a sort of continuation: Abramovich and his people had previously led the work of the teams that put together the legal and financial framework for the disengagement.

At that time, the team was asked to present the security and defense, economic, legal, and diplomatic framework for another withdrawal, this one from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), to be based on the lessons of the disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria. The committee was not given a mandate to lay down the borders of the retreat or decide which settlements would be evacuated, but was asked to map out the Israeli interests of another unilateral move for the area of the West Bank, if it turned out that there was no Palestinian partner for peace negotiations.

Thus, for example, Abramovich and his friends looked as the financial costs of evacuating 15,000 settler families (about 100,000 people) from far-flung communities. This would have been 10 times as many setters as the number evicted from Gush Katif.

Attorney Dov Weissglas, who at the time served as Sharon's chief of staff, tells Israel Hayom that these were "initial thoughts."

He clarifies: "We thought we needed to reorganize the Israeli presence in Jude and Samaria. No doubt, if Sharon hadn't been taken ill, the reality there would be completely different. It was a film that was cut off because of a power outage."

Weissglas confirms a report by the late journalist David Landau after the disengagement. In his book Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon, Landau wrote: "In October 2005, we all – [Weissglas], Sharon, his sons, Reuven Adler, my wife and I, went to the Galilee for a weekend. We talked for hours about the future … The disengagement from the Gaza area was a move in and of itself, but it was intended to be combined with an additional move that would come later that was based both on the Road Map [a plan devised by the Middle East Quartet and adopted by the administration of George W. Bush] and the desire to avoid an impasse. The thinking was to continue on to a similar action in the West Bank. We hoped that the security barrier would help create that reality, that the Jews living on the other side of the fence would start coming back to Israeli territory … that we would gradually withdraw our forces from more and more cities, more and more areas – without the whistles and bells of negotiations about a permanent peace deal, which would certainly get stuck on the issue of Jerusalem. That was exactly Sharon's thinking … that was where the decision to set up the team under Abramovich was made."

The committee's concern

Abramovich's team included Director General of the Finance Ministery Yossi Bachar, the Deputy Attorney General for International Law Shavit Matias, Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, and attorney Daniel Reisner. Abramovich worked in secret, far from the spotlight, while Sharon was flatly denying remarks by Olmert, who was acting prime minister, and his close associate Eyal Arad that a second disengagement was expected or being considered.

The committee's existence came to light only after Sharon fell into a coma and Olmert took his place. Olmert made the Realignment Plan one of his main issues and talked about it openly. Unlike Sharon, he didn't try to hide it at all. Abramovich, who moved from director general of the Justice Ministry to director general of the Foreign Ministry – along with Livni, who also switched ministries – continued his work.

In August 2006, after Sharon had been comatose for eight months, the committee submitted Olmert and Livni with a thick report that contained hundreds of pages and revealed a number of problems entailed in executing the move. The committee members started out by listing major difference between Gaza and Judea and Samaria.

According to the committee, the West Bank is "tactical terrain," whereas the Gaza Strip is topographically lower than Israel. The West Bank also has a number of water sources that are important to residents of Israel, which Gaza does not. The Gaza Strip is entirely closed off and easier to control from outside in terms of security. In contrast, the committee said, Israel would have difficulty finding a solution to the threat of rocket fire from hilly areas in Judea and Samaria, and there was also concern that Hamas would gain control of the large population centers there, making continued IDF presence in key parts of Judea and Samaria the most reasonable way of preventing rocket attacks and a Hamas takeover.

The committee members also assessed that in the case of a necessary military presence of that kind, Israel would not be able to receive international recognition of an "end to the occupation." They also expressed concern that a unilateral withdrawal would endanger the stability of Jordan, and observed that unlike Gaza, from whence Israel retreated to the Green Line, it wanted to hold onto the West Bank settlement blocs, part of the Jordan Valley, and east Jerusalem until a permanent peace agreement was signed.

'Arik asked, what will Condoleezza Rice say?'

Abramovich declined to be interviewed for this article. Former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said little, but clarified that "Aharon Abramovich did work on the Israeli interests in such a case [of a second 'disengagement' in Judea and Samaria - N.S.], but it was in principle, not because of any specific decision."

Olmert offers another significant point of view about the matter. During his time as prime minister, he tried his utmost to carry out the Realignment Plan, without success. Speaking to Israel Hayom, Olmert describes a meeting with Sharon at the end of August 2005, when Olmert was designated acting prime minister as well as finance minister.

The meeting took place about 10 days after the Katif area was evacuated and razed, as Olmert was about to go meet then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"Arik asked me what I would tell Rice. I answered that I would tell her that the disengagement from Gaza had been a 'preview' and I [Olmert] wanted to promote a bigger step; that we were planning to start talks with the Palestinians, and that if we didn't reach understandings about a broader deal, we would have to make another, bigger, unilateral withdrawal," Olmert says.

Olmert says that Sharon was not enthusiastic.

"He wanted me to be more moderate. I told him I was speaking on my own behalf and would stress that when speaking to Rice. Sharon arrived at that meeting from a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and he was very tired. Effi Eitam had cursed at him. Arik didn't like the idea, but he didn't have the energy to argue with me, so he knew exactly what I was going to tell Rice," he says.

In his book In Person, Olmert writes that when he returned to Israel after meeting with Rice, he gave Sharon a "general idea" about the conversation with her.

Q: Did Sharon ever tell you he was considering a disengagement from Judea and Samaria, too?

Olmert: No.

Q: Is it possible he chose to keep you out of the loop?

Olmert: I don't rule out the possibility that things happened with Dovi Weissglas and things were said. It's possible that he shared them with Sharon, and not with me. What I know clearly is that originally, Arik wanted the disengagement to include not four settlements in northern Samaria, but 17 settlements in the West Bank. The Americans were the ones who stopped him from that. They were afraid that internal opposition in Israel would wreck everything."

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'The fence as a starting point' 

Another person involved in what was happening at the time is Brig. Gen. (res.) Eival Gilady, who was then deputy GOC of the IDF Planning Directorate. Gilady, who had previously been involved in negotiations with the Palestinians, has also made it clear that "a withdrawal to the security barrier was and remains the general idea behind the disengagement."

Gilady says that Sharon "adopted it in principle – and apparently would have implemented it if he hadn't 'gone to sleep' two years too soon. The security barrier was supposed to have been the starting point for an adjusted border, by mutual agreement."

The security barrier was supposed to have surrounded seven to eight percent of the West Bank, and was planned to go around the large settlement blocs near the old border, which would have included 76% of the settlers living there, and 0.7% of the Palestinian population.

Landau's book quotes Gilady as saying that "the concept was designed to encourage the remaining 24% of the settlers to move into the settlement blocs or within the '67 borders of their own volition, within a two-year period."

Weissglas describes things similarly: "The fence was designed to create that reality and convince Jews who were left on the other side of it to come back to Israeli territory."

Weissglas and Gilady aren't alone. Dennis Ross served in a number of senior positions in the American administration, including director of policy planning in the State Department, special Middle East coordinator, and senior director for the Central Region [which includes the Middle East] under presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, respectively. Recently, in the book Be Strong and of Good Courage (Yedioth Books), which he co-authored with David Makovsky, Ross wrote that Sharon's successor, Olmert, intended to implement Sharon's plans, but failed.

Ross, like many others, has the impression that the 2006 Second Lebanon War and the police investigations against Olmert weakened him and forced him to resign, thereby preventing him from executing the plan. This week, I asked Ross if the plan had been conceived by Sharon, and mainly – had he ever heard, in real time, from Sharon or any of his people any thoughts about or intention to carry out "Disengagement II".

Ross refrained from a direct answer, but responded in an email: "Sharon clearly planned an additional withdrawal in the West Bank. There was no need to create Kadima if he did not plan a further withdrawal. I describe the history of his creating Likud after he retired from the military. It was not a small decision for him to leave the party he forged and start a new one, but he knew after Gaza, Likud would oppose any further withdrawals.  He was convinced that the only way to preserve what Israel needed long-term in the West Bank and ensure Israel would not become a binational state was to carry out a limited further withdrawal."

'The versions aren't contradictory'

Not all of Ariel Sharon's close associates or the people who worked with him in those years adopt the story about plans for a "Disengagement II". Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, who served as head of the National Security Council, claims that there was no such plan.

"It could be that there were informal forums in which it came up. I wasn't involved. But what I can say? The disengagement process was based on both dialogue and understandings with the Americans that the disengagement would include some part of Judea and Samaria. On Feb. 15, 2005, I presented Sharon with three possibilities. We could rebuff the American pressure and disengage from part of Judea and Samaria, too; we could evacuate the four settlements [in northern Samaria] – Ganim, Kadim, Homesh, and Sa-Nur; and the third option was to clear out 17 isolated settlements. Sharon supported the second option, and that is the one that was carried out."

Eiland says that from the moment it was decided, "As far as I know, there was no thought or consideration about any other act in Sharon's time. Only six months later did Olmert announce the Realignment Plan, as part of the Kadima party's platform, and adopted it when he became prime minister."

Eyal Arad, Sharon's media advisor, and Assi Shariv, his spokesman, as well as Lior Schillat, Sharon's personal aide and advisor, think that he had not planned another disengagement for Judea and Samaria.

"Sharon told me explicitly that the disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria was a tactical issue for a specific diplomatic purpose, and he had no intention of repeating it in other areas," Arad says.

"He saw the Road Map plan as a diplomatic and defense achievement for Israel, in a number of different aspects. The disengagement from Gaza was conceived after concern arose that the Road Map would be changed to Israel's detriment, as a result of pressure from various quarters," Arad adds.

Schilllat says something similar: "I never heard Sharon talk about a similar move in Judea and Samaria. There was only thought about moving isolated settlements to within the settlement blocs, but that never developed into any preparatory work and certainly not into anything that reached the prime minister. At the time, the world of Judea and Samaria and settlements was my world of content. I find it hard to believe that something would have happened in the Prime Minister's Office that I didn't know about."

Shariv, Sharon's spokesman, echoes that, but notes that there was "an attempt to look into the legal significance of such a possibility" [the Abramovich Committee - N.S.].

Today, it's hard to decide one way or the other, but the facts are that behind the scenes, and despite Sharon's denials at the time and while he was still in office – and with his knowledge – the issue was being discussed. Decisions might not have been made, but there was definitely talk and debate. The very work of the Abramovich Committee about the issue is testimony of that, as well as what Weissglas, Ross, Livni, Gilady, and Olmert all say – that Sharon was kept up to date and knew, and even if he had reservations, did not torpedo the meeting with Rice in which she was told that the disengagement from Gaza had only been a "preview."

And maybe everyone is right, or as Aluf Benn, who at the time was the diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz and who followed the events closely, puts it: "Sharon, like a good politician, kept both options open: on one hand, he denied that a disengagement from the West Bank was in the works. On the other hand, he wanted to have tools at hand in case he decided on a disengagement from there, too, so the supposedly 'contradictory' versions from his associates today don't necessarily contradict each other."

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Instead of laying the groundwork for the creation of a Palestinian state that would live in peace alongside Israel, many across the political spectrum in Israel now believe that the Gaza withdrawal of more than 8,500 Jews in August 2005 serves as a costly case study demonstrating the implications of evacuating lands and turning them over to Arab control.

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Many of the assumptions proposed by Israel's military establishment ahead of the withdrawals have proven false, while the social impact of the evacuations have left deep scars on many of the Jewish residents who lost their homes in the experiment.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen led the IDF's 36th Division that was responsible for carrying out the disengagement. At the time, he personally opposed the move, yet still carried out his assigned duties as a commanding officer.

"In a way, I now see the disengagement from Gaza as sort of a miracle from heaven," Hacohen told JNS.

"Just imagine if Hamas would have remained quiet for several years after the disengagement; there would have been a general consensus in Israel to disengage from Judea and Samaria. No one in his right mind in Israel will now agree to a disengagement from Judea and Samaria except for a few left-wing radicals."

Hacohen explains that the military assumptions that were asserted by proponents of the withdrawal from the security community have been proven "totally untrue."

The first assumption, he said, is that "territorial separation between Israelis and Palestinians, including massive evacuation of Jewish West Bank neighborhoods, will delineate borders, reduce friction and create stability."

Rather than lead toward a peaceful coexistence between neighbors, Hacohen said that "on the contrary, massive evacuation from Gaza gave Hamas a chance to fortify itself and make life for Israelis miserable."

He said that leading up to the controversial withdrawal, Israel's security establishment insisted that if security broke down, "the Israeli government would not hesitate to decide to embark on any necessary military operation;" that "the IDF will be able to remove this security threat within days;" and that any such an operation would be supported with "broad international backing."

When asked why he implemented the disengagement if he opposed it at the time, Hacohen told JNS that he felt if not for him, "it would have been a million times worse."

As he explained, "if the struggle in Gush Katif would have escalated to a point where soldiers would have been killed or injured severely, the settlement movement would have been delegitimized by the masses, and Sharon would have no problem evacuating the settlers from Judea and Samaria. I made sure that did not happen."

Broken hearts, shattered faith

Aside from the security setback of the Gaza withdrawal, former Gush Katif Regional Council member Yigal Kirzenshaft told JNS that the evacuation has taken a severe toll on the displaced community and ruined a model, albeit a flawed one, of integration between Jews and Arabs.

He said the government has done a less-than-satisfactory job of compensating the evacuees and helping them rebuild their lives, now 14 years after the disengagement. "They promised us full compensation and said that there will be a solution for everyone, but it turned out bollocks; they really never had any solutions."

Kirzenshaft related that the expulsion broke up some of the families who left. "The divorce rate increased, and it shattered the faith of many. Most of those expelled belonged to a national religious community to whom the value of Eretz Israel was sacred.

"The heartbreak of the expulsion even caused many to fall ill and die prematurely. These are young people who died from heartbreak."

Kirzenshaft added that "most of the residents were owners of greenhouses, where they grew and exported vegetables with a very high turnover rate. One acre produced 20 tons of tomatoes. It was a supernatural blessing, despite the fact that before we came it was a desert, total desolate. Now it reverted to its former state of total desolation and serves as a safe haven for terrorists."

"When we lived in Gush Katif, it was good for the Jews and for the Arabs," said Kirzenshaft. "The Arabs of Gaza were employed by the Jewish farmers and had a decent income to provide for their families. They did not want us to leave. Just recently, someone told me that one of the Arabs who worked in one of our greenhouses is now trying to grow a greenhouse on his own, but with no success."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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