Apologies to all those out there who think I should focus more/less/the same/not at all on Virginia politics, but I have a Master's Degree in Middle East Studies and just think this apparent 180-degree turnaround by Ariel Sharon is fascinating. The article in today's Los Angeles Times starts as follows:
When the last Jewish settlers leave the Gaza Strip, it will be the culmination of an extraordinary personal and political odyssey for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the man who almost single-handedly created the settlement movement.Sharon's decision to uproot the settlers he nurtured for so long is one of the great turnabouts in modern Israeli political history. Yet even those who have closely studied the 77-year-old leader are hard-pressed to say whether Sharon has reinvented himself, or whether he is acting in a manner entirely consistent with his core beliefs.
"One of the great turnabouts in modern Israeli political history?" We'll see, but it's certainly possible. The question is, how far will Sharon go to achieve peace with the Palestinians? Will he abandon his dream of "Greater Israel" (aka, "Eretz Yisrael") and pull Israelis out of settlements on the West Bank (aka, "Judea and Samaria")? Is this yet another case in world history of "only Nixon can go to China?" Perhaps we can call the current case "only Sharon can give up Gaza?" In other words, does it often take the hardest of hard liners to make peace with a mortal enemy? People like former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, for instance, who - along with former President Jimmy Carter - negotiated Israel's withdrawal from Sinai at Camp David. Stay tuned...this is starting to get really interesting.