Right and Wrong
Reader comment on item: Israel's Wayward Prime Ministers

Submitted by John W. McGinley (United States), Jun 29, 2004 at 14:39

Your comments in this piece are so insightful overall that it seems ungenerous to signal out one deficiency in your analysis. But the deficiency is a whopper and cannot be ignored. Ariel Sharon stands apart from all of his predecessors, not only going back to Rabin, but back to Peres and Shamir before Rabin.

Sharon, first of all, has built credibility by coming down hard and consistently on the terrorists. and he continues to do this in Gaza even while implementing the withdrawal. Sharon -- and here you miss the point entirely -- is NOT NEGOTIATING WITH ANYONE. Still less is he making concessions. Rather he is implementing the final arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians UNILATERALLY. Gaza, in virtually all the realistic calculations (Right and Left) was going to be turned over regardless. In the West Bank he is building the "fence." A geopraphically expanded Jerusalem will be the undivided capital of Israel. Jerusalem's suburbs will be part of Israel. And so will many of the settlements, mostly in Judea but also Ariel in Samaria, will stay under Israeli control. He is not making concessions, he is acting unilaterally and intelligently. Most of all -- which was not the case with ANY of the predecessors mentioned above -- Sharon makes the terrorists pay a tremendous price each and every time they commit their murders. And its's working. Compare Israeli deaths from terror in 2001 with what's going on.

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