Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of IMRA, 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. imra@netvision.net.il
Olmert's Retreat: Hardly Pragmatism Over Ideology
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
April 13, 2006
It has been an ongoing theme for retreat supporters to term their policy preference putting "pragmatism" over "ideology".
One can readily argue that the opposite is the case.
Is the implementation of a retreat that can be expected to leave the area under the control of a sovereign Hamas terror state out of a desire to immediately end the "occupation" at all costs so that at some future point in time Israel will not find itself forced to allow the Palestinians in the West Bank to vote in the Knesset (the "demographic threat") "pragmatism" or the expression of an extreme "ideology"?
Is the belief that if Israel unilaterally retreats to a line that this line will enjoy international recognition as a final border "pragmatism" or the wishful self-deception of an extreme "ideology"?
Is it "pragmatic" for Israel to essentially announce to the enemy that the more costly they make it for Israel to defend a given location that greater the odds Israel will retreat from it?
By the same token, is it "extremist" to oppose Mr. Olmert's retreat "idea" (the shallowness of the thinking that has gone into it so far is such that describing it as a "plan" might be deceptive) or instead "responsible"?
The use of this labeling is nothing new.
Looking back at the disastrous results, was Oslo "pragmatism" or "folly"?
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