Haaretz
Tishrei 22, 5765
Lawmakers from the Israeli left responded furiously
Wednesday to an interview to Haaretz by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
senior advisor, Dov Weisglass, in which he claimed that the disengagement
plan means a "freezing of the peace process."
"The significance of
the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process," Weisglass,
one of the initiators of the disengagement plan, said in an interview for
the Friday Magazine.
"And when you freeze that process," Weisglass
added, "you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you
prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.
"Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state,
with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.
And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential
blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."
"The
disengagement is actually formaldehyde," he said. "It supplies the amount
of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process
with the Palestinians." (The full interview will appear on
Friday.)
Left slams Sharon
Labor Party chairman Shimon
Peres said Sharon had never told him that the disengagement plan was meant
to freeze the peace process.
"He who seeks half-peace will bring
half-war," Peres said Wednesday.
In the wake of the comments,
Hadash MK Ahmed Tibi sent a letter to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan
Kurtzer questioning whether "the American administration is a partner to
Sharon's political deceit, which Weisglass revealed with incriminating
candor."
Tibi said that Weisglass' comments "bolster what we have
said all along, that the [disengagement] plan is a 'Sharon
bluff'."
Yahad MK Yossi Beilin said Weisglass' "frightening
comments" were uttered in a rare moment of truth, and show Sharon's real,
dangerous intentions.
The remarks "reveal the fact that it is
Sharon who is not a partner for peace, and the peace camp must work for
him to be overthrown," said Beilin.
Hadash MK Mohammed Barakeh
called the statements grave, saying they prove that the Sharon government
must be toppled as soon as possible.
These comments, Barakeh said,
affirm the importance of refusing to serve in the IDF and the relevance of
the Geneva Initiative, a peace plan co-authored by Beilin and former
Palestinian minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.
National Union MK Zvi
Hendel said that Weisglass' comments stem from political considerations,
namely to appease the right for the short term.
Asked why the
disengagement plan had been hatched, Weisglass said: "Because in the fall
of 2003 we understood that everything was stuck. And although by the way
the Americans read the situation, the blame fell on the Palestinians, not
on us, Arik [Sharon] grasped that this state of affairs could not last,
that they wouldn't leave us alone, wouldn't get off our case. Time was not
on our side. There was international erosion, internal erosion.
Domestically, in the meantime, everything was collapsing. The economy was
stagnant, and the Geneva Initiative had gained broad support.
"And
then we were hit with the letters of officers and letters of pilots and
letters of commandos [refusing to serve in the territories]. These were
not weird kids with green ponytails and a ring in their nose with a strong
odor of grass. These were people like Spector's group [Yiftah Spector, a
renowned Air Force pilot who signed the pilot's letter]. Really our finest
young people."
Weisglass does not deny that the main achievement of
the Gaza plan is the freezing of the peace process in a "legitimate
manner."
"That is exactly what happened," he said. "You know, the
term `peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace
process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security
risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements,
it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that
has now been frozen.... what I effectively agreed to with the Americans
was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the
rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That
is the significance of what we did."
Sharon, he said, could also
argue "honestly" that the disengagement plan was "a serious move because
of which, out of 240,000 settlers, 190,000 will not be moved from their
place."