Pulling for the pullout

[Colorado Blue]

An excellent long article, worth reading the whole thing.

Excerpts, edited a bit to avoid copyright hassles:

Avi Dichter does not share the apocalyptic forecasts of his friend Lieutenant General (res.) Moshe "Bogey" Ya'alon. A week ago...the former chief of staff predicted the outbreak of a "third terror war" in the West Bank after the disengagement, a war that will endanger the cities in the center and north of the country. "I heard his assessment," says the former head of the Shin Bet security service. "I don't know of intelligence that supports this. I don't know of logic that supports this. One of our mistakes is that we refuse to do a complete analysis of the whole problem. We look at the attrition we've been through in this war, at our conclusions, and refuse to see what has happened to the Palestinians."

The relative calm in the territories, he is convinced, has not taken hold by chance. The impression of the immense power Israel applied during its war on terror is not going to recede all at once with the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. And even though his home, in a tranquil southern town, is almost within range of the improved Qassam rockets, Dichter does not sound particularly worried about what will happen in Gaza after the Israelis leave. If opponents of the disengagement were hoping to make use of his criticism as ammunition in their struggle, they are in for a surprise.

snip

His reservations about the withdrawal concern security arrangements after the disengagement from northern Samaria. "Here we have a disagreement with the IDF. The army is also talking about a disengagement from the territory, not only from the four Jewish settlements. As the Shin Bet sees it, this is an unreasonable risk in today's conditions. If we don't act in the Jenin area, a vacuum will be created there and chances are that the terror organizations will come in and not the PA security apparatus. As far as the terror organizations are concerned, the combination of the information that will be flowing from the Gaza Strip and the possibilities inherent in the West Bank are everything they could desire. We have to be cautious about doing anything hasty in the West Bank." Altogether, Dichter is very suspicious concerning the transfer of responsibility for security in the West Bank cities to the PA. "At the end of January I was on a visit to the United States. They called me from the Shin Bet and asked me to come back immediately because there was a going-out-of-business sale underway here. I don't know what nutritional supplement they were giving out then in the IDF, but suddenly there was a softening of positions with respect to handing over the cities. I spoke with Sharon and Mofaz when I came back and we managed to stop this.

"There are very significant differences in outlook here. In the IDF they believed that we would take the problem and toss it to the Palestinians. Let them deal with it. They will be responsible for the cities and everything that happens will be their problem. We believe that the task is not to divest ourselves of responsibility but rather to ensure security. It's impossible to jump from the Shalom Tower without a parachute every time and say: Wow, we crashed. This happened to us in 2003 in Bethlehem. We transferred responsibility to (General) Abed al-Razak al-Yahya, which is - and no offense to anyone is intended - like arranging with Masha Lubelsky that Na'amat will be in charge of security. The Palestinians didn't do a thing and we paid a high price in the form of terror attacks in Jerusalem. Cities should be given to them only when something starts to move there. It is possible to prevent terror in the West Bank only if the IDF is in control, or the Palestinian security apparatus."

Dichter does not see any signs...that the Palestinians are fulfilling their commitments in the West Bank, neither in merging the various security branches nor in an arrangement of keeping watch on the wanted men. "I told the heads of the security branches: Today you are standing in the display window, stark naked. We haven't even left you a G-string. The era of funny business has ended. It isn't going to work any more. Today the Israeli government knows from us exactly what the gap is between the PA's declarations and its deeds."

snip

Dichter goes on to refer to the threat to Diaspora Jews from possible attacks on Sharon or the Temple Mount by extremists within Israel. Efforts are being made to talk some sense into these fools.

He also expresses regret about the delay implementing defensive measure, including the fence, which cost great loss of life:

"There was critical delay in two essential steps, the building of the fence and embarking on Defensive Shield. About half of our dead were hit as the result of terror attacks that started in Samaria, but 90 percent of them were killed before we completed the northern part of the fence in August 2003. In the face of these figures, it's impossible not to ask yourself how many Israelis would be alive today had we done these things in time. As for Defensive Shield, it was possible to worry about the risk to our soldiers, but we wasted precious months."

snip

In spite of the difficulty of the situation, including the apparent inability of Abu Mazzen to deal with the terrorists and the threat from Israeli extremists, Dichter remains hopeful that the disengagement will bear fruit.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/586595.html

If anybody wants to read the entire piece and can't access it, please let me know & I'll PM it to you.