To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz supports Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” plan, but the whole concept of being able to separate Israelis and Palestinians is false [“Bush, Sharon, My Daughter, and Me,” April]. Even if Gaza is completely emptied of any Jewish presence, there will continue to be thousands of Palestinians flooding into Israel daily for work. In addition, Israel will still be providing the Palestinians’ basic utilities and depending on the Palestinian authorities to prevent the bombing of population centers.

As even a cursory look at the daily news reveals, weapons of all sorts have been smuggled into Gaza under the noses of the unconcerned Egyptians, and terrorists have been invited to join the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Podhoretz concedes that the “new” Palestinian leadership’s beliefs about terrorism are no different from those espoused by Yasir Arafat. There is no evidence that the Palestinians now acknowledge the Jewish state’s right to exist; they do not even pretend to. Why should Israel rush ahead with a plan that uproots 8,000 Jews from their homes and businesses, especially when the plan has such uncertain benefits and when nothing has changed on the ground?

If, after this terrible experiment, terrorism actually increases, Israel will not be able to do anything about it, since the Israel Defense Forces will have been removed from the “hot” areas. Mr. Podhoretz argues that, in such a case, the Palestinians would suffer because they will lose American support for their state. But what if they are not as interested in a state of their own as they are in destroying the Jewish presence here? This is not a risk we Israelis can afford to take.

Mr. Podhoretz puts his faith in George W. Bush and the Bush Doctrine. But there is no evidence that, as he writes, “the Palestinians are now as subject as all the other regimes” to this “great new force.” Where exactly does Mr. Podhoretz see the Palestinians being held to some high standard? Where is the evidence of an end to Arab rejectionism or a Palestinian willingness to accept a two-state solution?

Even if the Bush Doctrine were the most perfect idea, the Bush administration is still saddled with a State Department notorious for taking the Arab side, a Congress that includes members from across the political spectrum, and an international community that is usually hostile to Israel. Mr. Podhoretz simply gives too much credit to the ability of one man, who is after all working within a democratic system, to push through his own agenda.

Deborah Buckman
Beit Shemesh, Israel

To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz’s article certainly goes to the heart of the matter concerning the Gaza disengagement. I found his feelings very close to my own and (I would venture to say) those of many other Israelis who have held their breath and allowed Ariel Sharon the leeway he required to proceed. But recent developments have caused me to become a skeptic.

At the end of March, the American ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, stated emphatically that there was no understanding with the U.S. regarding Israel’s retention of major Jewish population centers on the West Bank. President Bush and Secretary of State Rice moved in quickly to do some “damage control,” knowing that Sharon’s credibility in Israel would be cut to shreds if Kurtzer’s remarks were taken at face value.

But they did not deny what the ambassador had said; they simply restated Bush’s earlier, vague commitment that “new realities on the ground” would be taken into account when the final border between Israel and a new state of Palestine is drawn. During Sharon’s visit with the President in April, there seems to have been no substantive discussion of this issue. The shrill denunciation by the U.S. of plans in Israel to make Jerusalem contiguous with the populous suburb of Ma’aleh Adumim only highlights the problem.

Allan Leibler
Jerusalem, Israel

To the Editor:

Because of his extensive record of correctly foreseeing the consequences of major policies and actions in the Middle East, Norman Podhoretz has great credibility when writing about Israel’s disengagement plan. Nevertheless, his article supports policies that are dangerous for the U.S. and Israel. 

Mr. Podhoretz is hopeful that the two countries will enforce the provisions of the “road map” as they pertain to the Palestinians. But even as Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed terrorists into the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, Bush and Sharon have behaved as if all were progressing as stipulated. They have continued to support Abbas and the corruption surrounding his thugocracy.

Bush demanded that the Palestinians produce a leader who is not associated with terrorism. Thus, everyone pretends that Abbas was not involved with the 1972 Munich massacre, was not Arafat’s bosom buddy, and did not specialize in Holocaust denial. Abbas is certainly capable of keeping the Palestinian Authority itself from promoting anti-Semitism and “martyrdom,” though such hate continues to flourish as always in the Palestinian schools. If there is any doubt about Abbas’s beliefs, one need look no further than the order he recently reaffirmed to execute a large number of Palestinians whose “crime” was attempting to prevent attacks on Israelis.

In his admiration for President Bush, Mr. Podhoretz lets him off the hook entirely. His administration refuses to ask questions or make demands that might “weaken” Abbas. Instead, it places pressure on the Israelis, implying that they are responsible for producing good behavior from the Palestinians. Bush’s policies will ensure that Israel is prevented from ever achieving a definitive victory over its mortal enemies.

Laura T. Gutman
Durham, North Carolina

To the Editor:

Contrary to what Norman Podhoretz asserts, President Bush appears to be satisfied with “ritualistic condemnations of terrorism” by the Palestinian Authority. He has accepted Mahmoud Abbas’s “revolving-door” arrests of terrorists. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged Israel to make concessions to the PA, without which, it is contended, Abbas would lack the political power to crack down on terrorism. Meanwhile, Abbas has assured the terrorists that not only will he not disarm them, he will add them to the PA’s payroll. And the U.S. has continued to donate funds to the PA, despite Abbas’s failure to comply with his obligations to crack down on terror and his failure to end indoctrination in bigotry and violence.

There is no reason to suppose that if the PA continues to support terrorism, the U.S. will cease to support Palestinian statehood. Bush’s rhetoric has made it sound as if statehood were some sacred and immutable right for that undeserving band.

Richard H. Shulman
New York City

To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz’s article is so nuanced and qualified that one could find a half-dozen instances in which he doubts his own claim that Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan is, in the final analysis, good for Israel. This makes for a rather weak argument. Moreover, his defense of the plan is weaker than he supposes.

Mr. Podhoretz seems to agree with his interlocutor “C.” that the Palestinian leadership does not regard the Israeli evacuation of Gaza as resulting from the success of the intifada. But in the unlikely event that Sharon had become prime minister in a time of relative peace, can anyone credibly claim that he would have advocated unilateral withdrawal?

In fact, the withdrawal can and will be seen—by ordinary Palestinians, by the leaders of the PA, and by the terrorists who are their bedfellows—as a defeat for Israel. So when they have their provisional state and return to terror, Israel can place its trust in the U.S. to do—what, exactly? Put off final-status talks? What if, as is likely, the provisional state declares independence and asks for UN recognition? If millions of Palestinian “refugees” clamor for “return” to Israel? If the provisional state imports arms and forms alliances? If Palestinians besiege the separation fence and surround and threaten Israeli communities at the de-facto border? I could go on.

Indeed, barring the implementation of policies that would be anathema internationally and to a large segment of the Israeli intelligentsia and public, Israel appears to have been checkmated by its foes. Hoping that George W. Bush will in Solomonic style put matters right is wishful thinking.

Jonathan F. Keiler
Bowie, Maryland

To the Editor:

By speaking of policies he advocates in terms of the peace they will bring about, Norman Podhoretz imbibes the very drug that has consistently led Jews astray. More than peace, what Israel needs is to discourage aggression by making it so costly as not to be dared.

Allen Weingarten
Monroe Township, New Jersey 

To the Editor:

While trusting President Bush and his doctrine, Norman Podhoretz would do well to bear in mind the proverb of Rabban Gamaliel in the Mishnah: “Beware of rulers, for they befriend someone only for their own benefit; they act friendly when it benefits them, but they do not stand by someone in his time of need.”

George Shimanovich
Freehold, New Jersey 

To the Editor:

Though I am a great admirer of Norman Podhoretz, I feel that he has lost his inner compass. The anxieties pervading the air in Israel are very much due to people like him, who “put their faith in princes” to bring about the security and peace that we all yearn for. Common sense and the lessons of the Oslo debacle would be a better remedy than such faith for the “unmistakable intimation of tears” that Mr. Podhoretz finds in the current situation.

Barbara Oberman Herzliya
Pituah, Israel

To the Editor:

I hope that Norman Podhoretz has asked himself one double-barreled question:A0what future developments would convince him that he was wrong to support the current policies of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon, and what, afterward, would he recommend to correct things?

   Israel Pickholtz 
Elazar, Israel

To the Editor:

For Norman Podhoretz to be willing to stake Israel’s future on George W. Bush and the Bush Doctrine is shortsighted.A0Even assuming that Bush can be trusted for the rest of his term, what happens when he is no longer in office?A0Mr. Podhoretz does not address Golda Meir’s crucial question: “Who will guarantee the guarantor?”

Sheldon F. Gottlieb
Boynton Beach, Florida

To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz’s article is beautifully written, thorough, and compellingly argued, but he was too quick to dismiss the importance of a national referendum in Israel on the disengagement plan. He quotes a proponent of the plan who felt that Ariel Sharon was wrong to resist a referendum because it might have silenced the opposition and united the nation behind him. Mr. Podhoretz does not offer his own view, noting that the chances of holding a referendum were slim to begin with and that “it is impossible to tell whether the pullout from Gaza will presage a large-scale evacuation of Judea and Samaria, or whether it will strengthen Israel’s case for maintaining its hold over large chunks of those territories.”

But there is a compelling reason why a referendum should have been held—and should still be held—that has nothing to do with the merits of the plan or the difficulty in predicting its ultimate course. Without a referendum, it will be difficult to press what should be an essential demand in future negotiations: that any agreement reached between Israel and the PA must be approved by a referendum of the Palestinian public.

That way, the agreement would not simply be the work of a precarious political elite, and would be morally binding on the people. A referendum would help silence the opposition among Palestinians, unite them behind the plan, and deprive any future opposition of moral authority. Without a referendum, any agreement reached by Palestinian leaders can later be subject to challenge by those who would claim that they “sold out” Palestinian rights.

Rick Richman
Los Angeles, California

To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz rightly applauds President Bush for being the first American president to recognize that peace in the Middle East cannot come until the Arabs renounce their existential war against Israel, and that a necessary condition for this to come about was the replacement of the Arafat regime with one that eschews terror. But as Mr. Podhoretz shows and Ariel Sharon knows well, this condition is far from sufficient. The malevolence toward Israel that the likes of Arafat have bred into generations of Palestinians cannot be switched off in an instant.

Nevertheless, as Mr. Podhoretz observes, Bush’s grand initiative to transform the political culture of the Middle East from despotism to democracy, beginning in Baghdad rather than Ramallah, provides the context for Sharon’s complementary strategy to assure Israel’s long-term security. By limiting Israel’s claim to the disputed territories, retaining the most important settlements, and insisting on borders that can be defended, Sharon’s move to relinquish Gaza seizes the diplomatic initiative, insures that Israel will remain both democratic and Jewish, and helps reinforce the demand that a Palestinian state will not practice terror.

Sentiment in Israel for maintaining a Jewish presence in all the territories is understandably strong, and justifiable. But holding the territories would keep the issue of a Palestinian “right of return” on boil indefinitely, restore the initiative to the rejectionists, put Israel back into the political crosshairs of its regional and international enemies, and risk the strength of the all-important American partnership. Given the demographic and political realities, and Palestinian rejectionism notwithstanding, I agree with Mr. Podhoretz that Sharon’s strategy is the optimal one.

Michael Balch
Iowa City, Iowa

Norman Podhoretz writes:

I agree with almost everything my critics say about the Palestinians in general and Mahmoud Abbas in particular. Indeed, as some of them graciously acknowledge, I said most of these things myself. What divides us, then, is not the question of whether the Palestinians under Abbas have changed their stripes. Where we differ is on whether the United States under George W. Bush has changed its stripes.

Will Bush, as I believe, stick with the principles he enunciated on June 24, 2002? Will he, that is, continue insisting on an end to Palestinian terrorism as the necessary (but not sufficient) condition of American support for the establishment of a Palestinian state? Or will he—as Deborah Buckman, Allan Leibler, Laura T. Gutman, Richard H. Shulman, Jonathan F. Keiler, George Shimanovich, and Barbara Oberman variously contend—succumb to pressure from his own State Department and the “international community” and allow himself to be bamboozled by excuses and outright lies from Abbas the way his predecessors were by Arafat’s? As my critics all seem to recognize, it is on the answer to that question that an assessment of Ariel Sharon’s strategy ultimately rests.

Cutting to the chase, let me respond to Israel Pickholtz’s challenge. “What future developments,” he asks, would convince me that I was “wrong to support the current policies of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon”?

I implicitly met this challenge in the concluding pages of my article, but here, made fully explicit for Mr. Pickholtz’s benefit, is my position: I will admit to having been wrong the moment Bush goes along with—and Sharon acquiesces in—Abbas’s wish to skip the first two phases of the “road map” and to jump immediately into the third and final phase.

In phase I, the Palestinians are required to “undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israel anywhere,” and also to mount “effective operations aimed at . . . dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.” Only when the Palestinian Authority does this are the parties to enter phase II, in which negotiations are supposed to culminate in “the creation of a Palestinian state with provisional borders.” At that point, phase III kicks in, and the process begins of forging a “permanent-status agreement [on] borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements.”

Abbas claims that he has already fulfilled his commitments under the first two phases, and that the time has therefore come to enter into phase III. If Bush and Sharon were to accept this claim while the facts on the ground continue exposing it as a fraud (or, at best, as a self-deception), I would admit to having been wrong about them. I would also admit to having been wrong if they were to endorse the characteristically cynical preference of the “international community” for a “fast-track” approach (i.e., jumping into the third phase even though the requirements of the first two admittedly remain unmet by the Palestinians).

Yet contrary to the contention of Mr. Shulman and Laura T. Gutman that Bush and Sharon “have behaved as if all were progressing as stipulated,” neither man has ever wavered on the issue of terrorism. Bush and (pace Deborah Buckman’s reference to “a State Department notorious for taking the Arab side”) his Secretary of State continue to reiterate, and in very strong language, that further progress toward statehood will be impossible unless the Palestinians take serious action against terrorism. As for Sharon, his position is that, because Abbas has thus far failed to take such action, we are not even out of what the Israeli prime minister calls “the pre-road map phase,” let alone being finished with the first two phases and ready to plunge into the third.

To be sure, both Bush and Sharon are still hoping against hope that Abbas, with a little help from them, will succeed in his declaratory policy of coopting the terrorists by drawing them into a political process. Thus Sharon has made concessions to Abbas on prisoner release and checkpoints and has also altered the route of the security fence here and there in deference to “humanitarian” considerations. Thus, too, in late May, when Abbas visited the White House, he came away with a pledge of $50 million and public words of praise.

Being strengthened in these ways will necessarily make it harder for Abbas to get away with pleading weakness to Bush as an excuse for failing to crack down on terrorism—although it seems clear that the main purpose of the aid and the praise was to bolster him in the coming elections against Hamas. In line with the same purpose, while Bush made no bones about denouncing Hamas in public as a terrorist organization, it was only in private that he pressed Abbas to become more aggressive in squelching terrorism.

That he did so in private was confirmed even by unnamed “Palestinian officials” who expressed their pleasure at Bush’s public treatment of Abbas, but also “indicated” to the New York Times that

Mr. Bush had been tough on the need for them to do more to dismantle militant groups like Hamas with a history of attacks on Israel. In particular, administration officials say they are unhappy with . . . Mr. Abbas’s efforts to negotiate with Hamas . . . rather than trying to disarm it by force.

I for one would place my bet more on sticks than on carrots, but the mixed Bush-Sharon approach may conceivably be worth a shot, and it is in any event still a far cry from declaring that the job has already been done.

It is also true, conversely, that the Bush administration keeps reminding Israel of its own commitments under the road map on the expansion of settlements. Linking this kind of talk with the condemnation of Arab terrorism admittedly belongs to the old framework of moral equivalence rejected by Bush on June 24, 2002; but it is surely trumped by the assurance he gave to Sharon in his letter of April 14, 2004:

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949 [i.e., the ’borders].

This assurance was confirmed in very forceful terms by Secretary of State Rice in the wake of the Kurtzer flap to which Mr. Leibler refers. It was then subsequently reaffirmed in even more unambiguous terms by the President himself during Sharon’s visit to Crawford this past April. Furthermore, when Abbas said after his own visit to the White House in May that the letter had been “misunderstood,” the administration, dispelling the sly suggestion that he had received any such impression from Bush, issued the following statement:

President Bush . . . reiterated to President Abbas American policy with regard to the region. That policy has been well spelled out in speeches in April and June 2002, in his discussions with Prime Minister Sharon in Washington and in Crawford, Texas, and in his letter to Prime Minister Sharon dated April 14, 2004. The principles and positions set out at that time remain the policy of the United States.

But what about the vagueness in the April 14 letter that bothers Mr. Leibler (for example, on the question of how Ma’aleh Adumim can be made “contiguous” with Jerusalem)? Obviously, the intention here is to defer such issues until the final-status negotiations under phase III when, under the more propitious conditions that will presumably have developed by then, they will become more amenable to resolution.

There is, however, a very long way to go before phase III can be reached. In my article, I predicted that the process would probably get stalled in phase II, but by now I have begun wondering when it will even get out of the “pre-road map phase.” Which brings me back to my trust in Bush, and specifically in his threat to withdraw American support for the establishment of a Palestinian state if the PA is unwilling and/or unable to call off the dogs of terrorist war.

Suppose, as Deborah Buckman asks, that the Palestinians “are not as interested in a state of their own as they are in destroying the Jewish presence here?” Certainly this was true of them under Arafat, but people who know far more than I do about Abbas and the post-Arafat Palestinian condition say that it is not true of them today. If those people are wrong, then Deborah Buckman and others of like mind will be consoled by yet another instance of the famous Palestinian propensity never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Correlatively, Israel will be faced with a third intifada and will be forced back into doing what it did in defeating the second intifada. Only this time, with the fence and the withdrawal from Gaza completed, it will have stronger and tighter defensive lines, as well as the full freedom to conduct the kinds of offensive military operations that proved so successful then.

Under such circumstances, I am confident that Israel would again be given a “green light” by George W. Bush. But I do not believe that it will come to that. As against the worst-case scenarios painted by some of my correspondents, Michael Balch’s take on the situation seems to me far more plausible. I therefore commend his very skillful summation of the case to them and to all the others (except for Rick Richman, who has no need of it but whose commensurately skilful summation of the case for a referendum has been rendered academic by the march of events).

Finally, there is Sheldon F. Gottlieb’s question: “what happens when Bush is no longer in office?” In response to this, I can only repeat the expectation I have voiced a number of times about the Bush Doctrine: that by the end of its author’s second term, it will already have done so much to transform the broader Middle East—and therefore the context in which the Arab war against Israel has heretofore been waged—and will have acquired so much momentum that his successor will be unable and indeed unwilling to stop or reverse its course.