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Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of , Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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By Dr. Aaron Lerner
April 22, 2005
Three week delay in disengagement - crucial period?
It is far from certain what impact, if any, Israeli Labor Party primaries and Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections may have on implementation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan", but postponing disengagement to the 15th of August to avoid certainly increases the odds that these votes will in fact take place before disengagement.
Right now the Labor Party is headed by Shimon Peres, a man guided by the secular messianic belief that withdrawal to the Green Line will herald an era of utopian peace.
The latest poll of Labor Party voters finds that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has already pulled ahead of Peres as favorite for the top spot in the Party. Barak is also on record supporting Sharon's retreat but is considerably more skeptical regarding Palestinian intentions and more concerned about security considerations than Peres.
And while the PLC representatives today are hardly choirboys, the participation of Hamas and other overtly radical elements in the upcoming elections could lead to ruling Palestinian formations whose threatening nature would be hard to ignore.
August also brings us closer to the presidential elections slated for September in Egypt and heightened sensitivity and concern as to who or what will be in power next door to Gaza if President Mubarak does indeed allow for a serious presidential race.
Sharon has repeatedly stated that he intends to retreat from the Gaza Strip regardless of the either the situation on the ground or the consequences, but this may be more a reflection of his painfully limited planning horizon than a serious unchangeable position.
If developments by August make the very serious consequences of implementing this madness comprehensible and compelling even to those who refuse to look beyond the very immediate future, then history will note that, indeed, the decision to postpone the withdrawal out of deference to the three week annual mourning period commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples saved the Jewish State from plunging down a path to new destruction.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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