Uncertain Equanimity in Israel

...Sharon did not offer demography as a justification for leaving Gaza until his visit to the U.S...

...It is not altogether clear, though, that Sharon indeed sees the situation this way...

...We are facing the redefinition of Israel...

...Susser, one of Israel's most incisive political thinkers, bases his far-reaching appraisal on the assumption that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally, without asking anything of the Palestinians, is a first step in the redrawing of Israel's borders along demographic, rather than territorial, lines...

...The country went through perhaps the most profound crisis in its existence," says Tel Aviv University's Rabinovich...

...He has not persuasively presented the rationale that led him to his surprise "disengagement" proposal for Gaza...

...This is perhaps the greatest moment in Israel's history since 1948...

...This instinctive defense posture, however, does not reflect any certain vision of what lies ahead...

...A major question is the role a domesticated Hamas will play...

...A possible answer is that the demographic issue is a minefield for someone who hopes to be chosen by the Likud faithful as their candidate for prime minister in next year's elections...

...It encourages calmly weighing a variety of scenarios, among them some that do not entirely negate critical demands of the main protagonists...

...To retain Likud's leadership, he must swing to the Right before the party's primaries...

...Palestinian militants kept constantly on the move for fear of Israeli strikes...

...If Sharon had demography in mind in formulating his proposal, why hadn't he said so from the start...

...Will the Islamic organization be pulled toward the center, or will it radicalize Palestinian society from within the political establishment...

...This is about our very being...

...Israel today is stronger than it has ever been vis...

...Its unraveling began in 1979, when all of Sinai was returned to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty...

...To retain American backing, he will have to swing back to the Left afterward...

...But that implies a massive withdrawal from the West Bank, far beyond the four settlements Sharon has agreed to give up there along with the 17 in Gaza...

...In the end, the Palestinians accepted a ceasefire, he says, "because they saw that [terror] was leading nowhere...

...In his initial explanation for his move, Sharon said an Israeli political initiative was necessary to forestall international schemes not attuned to Israel's interests...

...By using terror against Israeli civilians, the Palestinians sought to undermine the Jewish state's political will, Kuperwasser notes...

...Within a decade, Palestinians will outnumber Jews between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, calling into question either the Jewish or democratic character of Israel if the two peoples are not separated...

...Political observers take him at his worduntil the elections...

...That in itself is a welcome development...

...Does that statement represent an insight into the recesses of Sharon's mind, or was it the artful contrivance of a speechwriter intent on making the withdrawal acceptable to an American Jewish audience by linking it to the future of Diaspora Jewry...

...Sharon's Gaza initiative is seen by many as acknowledgment that in the age of missiles and tank-killing helicopters the territorial imperative no longer dominates...

...Given a dangerously vulnerable shape, including a waist only nine miles wide, Israel aspired to adding buffers that would keep major cities out of its neighbors' artillery range and keep their tank armies far enough from the border to permit reserves to mobilize if war came...

...A new uprising remains a distinct possibility...

...This is no longer true...

...The intifadawasthe victory of the Israeli middle class," says the Jaffee Center's Shtauber, referring to the broad public that did not buckle...

...But Israeli special forces, often in Arab dress, regularly snatched wanted men, even from the hearts of cities or densely populated refugee camps...

...It was a d?©marche that startled not only political associates on the Right but many in the opposite camp who were uneasy about pulling out of the Gaza Strip without even trying to negotiate some quid pro quo with the Palestinians...

...The badly staged Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000when the IDF looked as if they were fleeing for their lives-enthralled the Palestinians, who hoped to see a similar debacle a few months later following the outbreak of the intifada...

...As matters stand, Sharon wants to have a long-term interim settlement that would test the Palestinians' intentions toward Israel along with their ability to establish a coherent, terror-free state inside temporary boundaries...

...Sharon has hastened to stress that there will be no additional unilateral withdrawals on the West Bank...

...Even if the Palestinians bombard the departing settlers only with flowers, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested, officials here believe that sooner or later Gaza may become a launching pad for rockets and mortars fired into Israel...

...Shown to representatives of 40 communities bordering the Gaza Strip, it consisted of a thin metal sheet with a thick underside of wood...

...So has their belief that the Arab world, and indeed the world at large, would come to their aid...

...Itamar Rabinovich, an ex-ambassador to the United States who is president of Tel Aviv University, credits Sharon for having the courage to abandon his lifelong notions about a Greater Israel...

...More impressive than the public's resilience were the astonishing operational skills demonstrated by the Shin Bet Security Service and the IDF in dealing with suicide bombers who welcomed death and with terror cells embedded in the Palestinian civilian population...

...The new shellproof roofing, therefore, is to be installed atop all existing homes and public buildings within range of Gaza...

...Israeli helicopters and armed drones repeatedly struck with pinpoint accuracy at targets in the midst of the teeming Gaza Strip on the basis of real-time information from the ground, although not without causing collateral damage...

...The problem, of course, is the differing views over the size and nature of a Palestinian state, and the acrimony and distrust imprinted on both sides by the long conflict...

...Chief of Staff General Moshe Ya'alon feared that it would "put wind in the sails" of Hamas and other Arab militants, encouraging them to believe their resistance was driving Israel out of Gaza just as Hezbollah's resistance had driven Israel from southern Lebanon...

...They weren't far from succeeding, if you remember the refuseniks," he adds, speaking of the number of Israeli helicopter pilots and other servicemen who refused to attack targets in built-up areas...

...We need a Palestinian state maybe more than the Palestinians do...

...to promote final-status talks as soon as the Gaza withdrawal is completed...

...Territory, when it includes a large Arab population, has become a liability, he declares...

...This is perceived by most Israelis now as a bigger threat than long-range artillery...

...The new security question for Israel," says Zvi Shtauber, a former senior military intelligence officer who heads the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, "is how we can preserve the Jewish character of the state...

...Sharon and his aides claimed they had Washington's understanding that Israel would be able to retain its major settlement blocs, which make up about 6 per cent of West Bank territory, in a final peace agreement...

...in midMay to meet with American Jewish leaders...

...But the Palestinians' conviction that their cause is just has not waned and, ironically, their desire for statehood is supported by most Israelis, including Sharon...

...But Mahmoud Abbas, concerned that such an "interim" solution could last forever, has been pressing the U.S...

...To some the breathing space revealed a region that, almost without anyone noticing, has turned a decisive corner...

...For if detaching from Gaza's 1.3 million Arabs is good for Israel, detaching from the 2.4 million Arabs on the West Bank should be even better...

...He came to understand that you can have a military victory but suffer a strategic defeat if you lose the demographic battle...

...There he linked the withdrawal publicly, apparently for the first time, with the need to relinquish control over the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza for demographic reasons...

...Presumably, the Israelis understand better today that there will be no peace without an end to the occupation and an overall solution the Palestinians can be persuaded to accept...

...The object of the military in the intifada was to conventionalize an unconventional war by taking the civilians out of it," explains Kuperwasser...

...Since Israel's founding, "strategic depth" had been the buzz term for a security concept resting on expansion...

...If you lose your values, you lose the war," he cautions...

...The wood would absorb shrapnel...

...But four years of daily terror that killed more than 1,000 Israelis-at a cost of over 3,000 Palestinian deaths-did not lead to significant emigration from Israel, despite the severe psychological and economic strains, nor did it cause any social or political upheaval...

...But the confrontation that the Arabs boasted would result in Israel's liquidation ended up bestowing on it far-flung lines it had never dared dream of...

...Yet if, like Moses, he can bring his people to within sight of the Promised Land, he will have won for himself an honorable place in history...

...A vast network of informers permitted Israeli intelligence to monitor the innards of Palestinian society, including the terror networks...

...But Greater Israel-the West Bank and Gaza Stripremained the historical-religious-strategic nub of the Israel-Arab dispute...

...And the anger stirred in Likud's Central Committee by his Gaza decision has already assured his having a serious struggle for the party's leadership against former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu...

...Only then would the parties sit down to negotiate final-status questions like refugees, Jerusalem and permanent borders...

...Palestinian collateral losses in Israeli strikes were significantly reduced, says Kuperwasser, by improved operational techniques...

...The election of charismaless Abbas last January as successor to Yasir Arafat was an expression of the Palestinian national will to halt the intifada and pursue political objectives by nonviolent means...

...And by using their own civilians as a shield for their militants, the Palestinians were attempting to force Israel to compromise its values...

...People ask why we are giving up Gaza without getting anything in return...

...It will guarantee a Jewish majority in the state of Israel...

...Even Hamas and the other militant groups bowed to the prevailing sentiment...

...Unlike the situation during the intifada, when everyone knew what the next day would bring-basically, more mayhem-no one on either side knows what to expect...

...Israel is preparing for the morning after the evacuation this summer of its Gaza Strip settlements, and the dawning of a peaceful new era does not figure prominently on its list of likely scenarios...

...Instead of pushing Israeli society toward concessions, it brought to power the toughest guy on the block, Ariel Sharon, as Leftist sentiment shifted to the Right...

...When you reach ultimate authority, your perspective changes," observes Rabinovich...

...Arafat believedthat Israeli society was soft and would capitulate to Palestinian demands after a few days of violence...

...Ever-improving intelligence and aggressive forays into Palestinian areas to arrest or kill militant leaders and operatives further reduced the civilian casualty toll inside Israel...

...We believed for decades," he says, "that territory brings security...

...But his daring Gaza initiative notwithstanding, it would be stretching imagination beyond reasonable bounds to envision Sharon making sufficient concessions on the West Bank to permit a final agreement with the Palestinians...

...The future of the Jewish people depends on Israel's character as a Jewish state," he said, reading from a text...

...Super Israel existed little more than a decade...

...The Six Day War demonstrated the country's vulnerability when Jerusalem was heavily shelled from the West Bank and Jordanian Long Tom guns hit the outskirts of Tel Aviv...

...Though chastened, the Palestinians have not been cowed...

...The diplomats sent periodically by Washington and the European Union to resolve the fight invariably ended up abandoning the effort after a few weeks...

...The remark went almost unnoticed in Israel...

...They are weary from the four-year war, and their early hopes of repeating Hezbollah's success have long since evaporated...

...Although American officials have declined to confirm this interpretation, they have not publicly rejected it...

...The informers were augmented by camera drones constantly circling over the Palestinian areas and by electronic intercepts...

...It's not easy to act upon intelligence that has a life expectancy of seconds," says the second-in-command of Israeli Military Intelligence, Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, "but we do...

...Once he is re-elected, assuming that occurs, we will know how far he is prepared to go in making other "painful concessions"-a term he often uses-to the Palestinians...

...Abraham Rabinovich is the author of The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East...

...Presumably, the Palestinians understand better today than they did in 2000 where a violent confrontation with Israel will lead...

...In addition, a security zone up to 200 yards wide is being developed around the Gaza Strip itself to prevent terrorists from infiltrating Israel...

...The security barrier being built on the West Bank proved highly effective in keeping suicide bombers from reaching civilian targets in the heart of Israel, even though it is still incomplete...

...The Palestinians wreak revenge for their plight in bed by producing far more children than do Israeli Jews, though the latter have a high birth rate too...

...This, senior security officials worried, would inevitably encourage Hamas et al...

...The metal, company officials explained, ensured that a mortar round or missile fired from Gaza would explode on contact and not penetrate the building below...

...What matters more is the demographic threat...

...vis the Arab world, and besides that it has a friend in the White House...

...He gave substance to this claim when he obtained from President George W. Bush last spring official United States recognition that the facts created on the ground by the establishment of Israeli settlements since 1967 made it unrealistic to return to the pre-Six Day War borders...

...The death of Yasir Arafat last November was the catalyst that finally permitted the warring sides to back off and take stock of where they were...

...That is what we will be getting in return, a Jewish state...

...The Strategics of Demography Uncertain Equanimity in Israel By Abraham Rabinovich Jerusalem In May Israel Military Industries, whose sophisticated weaponry has played a role on numerous battlefields, unveiled one of the most modest products to come off its production floor-a stretch of roofing...

...In this spirit, we initiated the withdrawal plan...

...During the four years of the second intifada, Israelis and Palestinians were locked in a bloody brawl that seemed to defy resolution...

...The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) command was also distinctly uncomfortable with Sharon's decision...

...The purpose of the Zionist enterprise was to create a state for the Jewish people in which we are eternally the majority...

...Demography is now the name of the game...

...to pursue similar tactics in the West Bank...

...The sharp turn of events reflected Israel's impressive success in coping with the intifada, the longest and in some respects hardest of its wars, because the civilian population was in the forefront of the battle...

...We are in a grand historical moment," says Professor Asher Susser, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University...

...What the Palestinians could have gotten from Israel without the war they will never get now," says the Dayan Center's Susser...