Sharon and the settlers

More on the Gaza disengagement. Here's a piece by Zev Chafets on Ariel Sharon's thinking and his deal with George Bush:

... Bush realized that there were political limits on what Sharon could do. Neither Sharon nor any conceivable Israeli prime minister would ever evict the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who now live in East Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs of the West Bank. Asking for that would be an automatic deal-breaker. Same for the Palestinian demand that millions of Arab refugees and their descendants be "returned" to Israel. And Israel would never relinquish its option to respond militarily to armed aggression.

Bush acknowledged these Israeli truths in an official letter he sent to Sharon in April of 2004. In exchange for that recognition, however, the president asked for - and got - Sharon's agreement to do what he could do. Evacuating Gaza was one of those things.

And this article by Nadav Shragai looks at different perspectives within the Israeli right, opposed to the disengagement:

[M]any of the speakers contended that the chance of arresting the process was nil, that it was bound to happen.

From here on in... modes of protest should be devised to sear into the public consciousness the trauma of evacuation as a painful and heart-wrenching event that will not be forgotten for years to come, and thereby make any future plan for the evacuation of settlements and other lands something that Israeli politicians and statesmen will endeavor to avoid as much as possible.

(Hat tip: A and L.)