One day in the summer of 1981, when I was still living in Brooklyn, I received a call from Dassie Marcus, a fervent supporter of Israel, the settlement movement, and Gush Emunim.

She informed me that a professor named Yuval Ne’eman was in town to garner support for the newly founded Israeli political party Techiya, whose platform was fighting the Camp David accords and preventing the evacuation of the Jewish city of Yamit in the Sinai.

Dassie suggested I interview Ne’eman for The Jewish Press.

Arrangements were made and I met with the professor. At the time, the pro-Israel community in the U.S. was vocally opposing the Reagan administration’s intent to sell two all-weather surveillance, command, control and communications (AWACS) aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

I asked Ne’eman for his take on the controversy, figuring he’d give me a stock response. Instead he replied, “Indeed, it is a threat to Israel – but surrendering Sinai, from an intelligence point of view, is like giving Egypt 200 AWACS.”

A few weeks later I traveled to Israel and paid a courtesy call on Ne’eman in the Knesset. I also brought him a copy of the paper containing our interview. He was impressed and proposed that I become his spokesman to the foreign press.

I would spend the next six years working very closely with one of the most brilliant and exciting people I’ve ever met. Born in Tel Aviv in 1925, a member of the underground Haganah at the age of 15 and a child prodigy accepted by the renowned Technion in Haifa at 16, by the time I met him he had long been acknowledged as Israel’s leading scientist.

Ne’eman was credited with discovering the basic symmetry of the subatomic particles of matter while working on his doctoral thesis at London’s Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1960-61. In the 1960′s he founded the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University, where he later served as president.

In 1969 he won both the Israel Prize for exact sciences and the Einstein Medal for physics. He also played a major role in forging Israel’s defense system and strategies, serving as deputy director of military intelligence and IDF military attaché in England, as a member of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission and as chief scientist in the Defense Ministry.

All those accomplishments were already behind him in the early 1980′s, but he would prove as vital as ever in the years to come – as Israel’s first minister of Science and Development, as founder of the Israel Space Agency, which he chaired until the end of his life, as a member of Knesset, and as the recipient of dozens of awards, prizes and honorary doctorates from major universities.

Yuval, as I now took to callinghim, had a keen insight into Israel’s leading political figures. It was he who first enlightened me as to the character of Ariel Sharon – so much so that when Sharon came up with the Gaza disengagement plan more than two decades later, I was not nearly as shocked as so many others seemed to be, particularly those in the national religious camp.

It was shortly after the evacuation of Yamit, which Sharon of course oversaw with an iron hand. I had been in Israel just a few months and was still a greenhorn, unfamiliar with Israeli politics and politicians. All I knew about Sharon was based on the impression, widespread in America, that he was a superhawk who would never dream of giving up an inch of land to Israel’s enemies.

With that image of Sharon implanted in my mind, I was stunned – even traumatized – when he carried out the Yamit evacuation. True, he was following orders – but in light of his past pronouncements I was sure he would resign on principle and leave the task to someone else. So Sharon’s apparent readiness to erase a thriving Jewish city really bothered me. But what I found even more disconcerting was that Yuval seemed totally unsurprised by Sharon’s actions.

While driving with Yuval from the Knesset to Tel Aviv in the aftermath of Yamit, I noted my disappointment with Sharon and asked him, as someone who’d known and worked with Sharon, to explain to me how such a hawk could have done such a thing.

Quietly, even coldly, Yuval gestured out the window and said, “Shmuel, you see those small hilltops over there? Sharon can today build you one like that and tomorrow take it down. Don’t ask questions about Sharon.”

One thing about Yuval that struck me as amusing was that he would always tell me he was not a believer. “I’m an atheist,” he’d insist, and he had a scientific answer for everything. And yet whenever he spoke – in private conversations or in Knesset speeches, with ministers or diplomats or addressing international forums – he would always mention God. He peppered his sentences with statements like “God willing” or “with God’s help” or “only God knows.”

Maybe they were just figures of speech delivered out of habit, but Yuval did have a very strong affinity for Eretz Yisrael and the Jewish people. He was the epitome of the proud Jew, a man whose Jewishness was never far from the surface and whose awareness of Jewish destiny permeated his very being.

This aspect of his personality was displayed vividly to me on a number of occasions, none more memorably than when, in his role as science minister, he was invited to visit West Germany. I usually did not accompany him on his trips abroad when the Knesset was in session, as he needed me, in my position as liaison between the science ministry and the Knesset, to keep my eye on developments in Jerusalem.

But as we were preparing for his trip to Germany he said to me, a visibly religious Jew, “Shmuel, you know, I would like to take you along with me. I want the Germans to see that despite what they tried to do to us, they didn’t succeed.”

As a longtime and key member of Israel’s atomic energy agency and a leader in building Israel’s nuclear reactor, Yuval was privy to state secrets and was a talented practitioner of diplomatic sleight of hand. In 1960 Yuval was appointed director of the nuclear reactor at Nahal Sorek and given the task of dealing with U.S. officials, who routinely attempted to ascertain just what the Israelis were up to.

Whenever an American envoy would arrive in Israel to investigate Israel’s involvement in nuclear and atomic ventures, Yuval would be on hand to host them – to, as he put it, “fardrei them a kop.” Inevitably, the visitors would prepare to return to Washington strongly suspecting that the wool had been pulled over their eyes, and Yuval would wave goodbye to them with a telltale twinkle in his eye.

He may have been Israel’s top scientist and one of the country’s leading defense intellectuals, but Yuval knew how the political/diplomati game was played, and he played it with great relish.

Although many see Yuval’s greatest contributions to Israel in terms of science, space and technology, I can attest that it was thanks to Yuval that the settlement movement was strengthened to the extent it was in the 1980′s.

After the dismantling of Yamit, Yuval decided it was imperative to bolster the Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza to ensure they wouldn’t meet the same fate as Yamit. Gaza, of course, did end up going the way of Yamit, but what Yuval helped bring about in Judea and Samaria made it considerably more difficult for any Israeli government to completely write off the settlement enterprise as part of some future “peace” scheme.

One of the conditions for Techiya’s joining the Begin government in 1982 was that Yuval, in addition to becoming science minister, would head the Ministerial Committee on Settlements. This was the committee that had the authority to build new settlements and strengthen existing ones. It would convene every Sunday after the weekly cabinet meeting in the Prime Minister’s Office and decide on various settlements.

Yuval managed to authorize more than 50 settlements during that period. But that’s nothing compared to what he could have done had it not been for the constantly clashing egos of the housing minister, David Levy, and the defense minister, Moshe Arens. New settlements had to be okayed by these two ministers as well, but all too often they were at bitter odds with each other. As a result, petty political concerns trumped the authorization of additional settlements.

That was particularly true with regard to Hebron. Had the committee gotten its act together and approved the new settlements Yuval intended for Hebron – he was ready to settle Hebron en masse – no Israeli government would have been able to even entertain the notion of giving up that ancient Jewish city.

An interesting correspondence I was privy to was one between Yuval and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Yuval knew that Chabad once boasted a prominent community in Hebron and still owned property there. As mentioned above, he was intensely interested in building up the Jewish presence in Hebron, and so he wrote a letter to the Rebbe asking him to call on his chassidim to resettle Hebron. He promised to provide any and every available assistance.

The Rebbe thought highly of Yuval’s approach to military and strategic issues – at one time even writing to Professor Herman Branover that “[Ne'eman's] security positions are identical to mine.” But he rejected Yuval’s request that he send chassidim to settle Hebron. The rebbe feared – presciently, in light of subsequent events in the West Bank and Gaza – that the Israeli government would not give the settlers adequate security and protection against Arab attacks.

“There is no need to elaborate to you, a minister in the government, on how the police and those responsible for the police reacted in the past in that area,” the Rebbe wrote to Yuval.

The Rebbe added that even if the government promised to ensure the safety of the Jews of Hebron and “provide adequate security for all the residents of the area as well as for those will come visit them from close by or far away,” he was certain “that I don’t have to explain to you that these promises are not at all sufficient as experience not too long ago has proven.”

In that letter the Rebbe also castigated the Israeli government for the expulsion of Jews from Yamit, its handling of the war in Lebanon, and its habit of blaming the U.S. for every Israeli misstep.

“I do not want to elaborate on such an alarming and painful matter,” he wrote. “The main thing is that you know what is going on in more detailbut Israel has made Washington a scapegoat for all its foul-ups.”

One of Yuval’s most admirable traits was his ability to relate to all people, from the most eminent scientists, ministers, and professors to the plain man in the street. He was well aware of his status as Israel’s greatest living man of science, a key player in Israel’s defense establishment, and a figure revered by world leaders, yet he never displayed the slightest trace of conceit or superiority. For the longest time he did not have a state car or a chauffeur. He would take the bus to the Knesset like any working man or woman.

Many were the times we met at the central bus station in Tel Aviv to board the 405 Egged bus to Jerusalem. The drivers and passengers who recognized him were amazed that he waited in line to board the bus with everyone else. They would ask in disbelief, “Excuse me, are you Yuval Ne’eman?”

Yuval’s departure from the political arena and his full-time return to the academic world came in 1992 after Yitzhak Shamir lost the premiership to Yitzhak Rabin. Even prior to the election Yuval had become increasingly soured on politics. He had issues with his Techiya colleague Geula Cohen, who was angry at Shamir’s participation in the Madrid peace conference at the end of 1991.

Shamir had his own problems with Cohen, whom he at least indirectly blames for Labor’s 1992 election victory and the Oslo accords that came soon afterward.

Shamir once told me that Cohen “made life miserable with her daily threats of [forcing] new elections, so I decided to call for new elections myself six months before our term was due to expire. My mistake was that I relied on the Russian vote. I was sure that after helping them all to emigrate from Russia and to come to Israel they would vote for me. But they betrayed me.

“Yuval Ne’eman was against her actions and if not for her, my government would have lasted longer and maybe we would never have come to a situation like Oslo.”

At any rate, Labor’s victory and the signing of the disastrous Oslo accords hurt Yuval deeply and from that period on he distanced himself from politics, refusing to be interviewed or to answer any questions on political matters. He immersed himself in his job as director of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies, writing scientific papers and books.

Honors continued coming Yuval’s way in his final years. In 2003 he was awarded the EMET Prize for Arts, Science & Culture, and just last year the Knesset sat in special session on his 80th birthday in recognition of his outstanding achievements and contributions to Israel.

Yuval passed away at age 81 on April 26 of this year. He is survived by his wife, two children, two grandchildren, a sister – and the strong Jewish state he fought to create and to which he devoted his intellect, his energy, his life.

JERUSALEM – After months of denying their party would seek to divide Jerusalem, officials in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima administration last week announced they are drafting a plan to unilaterally withdraw from some of the city’s neighborhoods and making special arrangements for key holy sites.

“Those same neighborhoods will, in my assessment, be central to the makeup of the Palestinian capital … al-Quds,” said Schneller, calling Jerusalem by its Arabic name.

Schneller did not specify last week which sections of Jerusalem would be vacated, but another Kadima official told reporters the party’s plan calls for withdrawing from much of the eastern section of Jerusalem. Schneller said Jerusalem’s Old City, its holy sites and adjacent neighborhoods would become a “special region with special understandings” but remain under Israeli sovereignty. He did not specify whether that meant placing key holy sites under third-party custodianship.

Although Kadima officials had consistently denied they were planning to evacuate any part of Jerusalem, just days before the March parliamentary elections, Schneller revealed that a Kadima-left government would divide Jerusalem and allow a Palestinian state to be established in parts of Israel’s “eternal capital.”

The debate was not widely reported by the media.

“The Old City, Mount Scopus, the Mount of Olives, the City of David, Sheikh Jarra will remain in our hands, but [regarding] Kafr Akeb, Abu-Ram, Shuafat, Hizma, Abu-Zaim, Abu-Tur, Abu Dis, in the future, when the Palestinian state is established, they will become its capital,” Schneller said at the debate.

The neighborhoods Schneller listed are located on Jerusalem’s periphery, near the city̓s border with the West Bank.

Several Kadima officials and leaders associated with the party’s founder, former prime minister Ariel Sharon had previously made statements about dividing Jerusalem that immediately were denied by the party.

In December, Sharon’s senior campaign pollster, Kalman Gayer, said in an interview with Newsweek that the prime minister would give up parts of Jerusalem in a peace agreement.

Immediately following the publication of Gayer’s remarks, Sharon appeared on state-run Israeli television and denied that his vision for a Palestinian state included Jerusalem.

Olmert, who served as mayor of Jerusalem from 1993-2003, said in a June 2004 interview with the Jerusalem Post that Israel was contemplating turning parts of Jerusalem over to Palestinian control.

“Jerusalem is dear to me, but one must not lose sight of proportions over peripheral areas we do not need,” said Olmert, who was then deputy prime minister. He claimed ceding control of eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods to the Palestinians is “needed to maintain a Jewish majority in the Holy City.”

Government officials immediately denied that Olmert’s statements implied a Jerusalem withdrawal. Kadima’s clims that the government indends to withdraw from only peripheral sections of Jerusalem worry many here. Previous Israeli governments had denied withdrawal plans only to carry them out later, followed by announcements of more withdrawals from areas they had pledged not to vacate.

Olmert was the first Sharon deputy to go public with Israel’s plan to evacuate its Jewish communities from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank communities. That plan was at first denied but later announced by Sharon. Israel withdrew from Gaza and the West Bank towns this past August, claiming there would be no further West Bank withdrawals.

Following the Gaza withdrawal, Olmert made statements about withdrawing from large sections of the West Bank. His statements immediately were denied by Sharon.

Olmert in February announced his administration will seek to “change Israel’s borders” by withdrawing from the vast majority of the West Bank.

Israel’s left-wing Labor and Meretz parties have in the past discussed dividing Jerusalem. Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 offered the Palestinians a state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem, an offer rejected by Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, who instead launched a new intifada in September of that year.

Daniel Wultz, the Florida teenager critically injured in a suicide bombing last month in Tel Aviv, is the “best target combination we can dream of – American and Zionist,” said Abu Nasser, a leader of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, one of the groups responsible for the deadly blast.

“It is known that the Jews are sly and not honest, and they are leading into this trap of the Middle East in order to carry out their plan of controlling the world,” Abu Nasser told WorldNetDaily.

Abu Ayman, a leader of Islamic Jihad, which also took responsibility for the April 17 bombing in which Wultz was injured, threatened all Americans and Jews worldwide and expressed regret Wultz is still alive. Wultz lost his kidney, spleen and a leg in the bombing and is reportedly still fighting for his life. (See story, page 3.)

“The Americans are now the typical enemy of the believers like it is mentioned in the holy Koran. They think that they are all mighty and invincible, and they seem to not have the right conclusions from what happened to them in the last few years. The Americans are now the best representatives of the devil on earth,” Abu Ayman said.

Asked whether his terror group would target a restaurant here if they were informed it contained American civilians and not Israelis, Abu Ayman replied, “This is a hypothetical question, but in my opinion at the execution step [of an attack] nothing changes.”

The terrorist said Jews of all backgrounds are targets: “The meaning and the goal of our lives is to fight the devil spiritually and physically. The Jews are the expression of both kinds of devil. No mercy for devils.”

Wultz’s family have requested people around the world pray for Daniel, whose Hebrew name is Chaim Meir Naftali, son of Sara.

*******

Five months after their organizations urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pressure Israel into accepting a border deal that may have facilitated a major planned suicide operation last week, leftist American Jewish leaders assert they stand by their vocal support for the international agreement.

The Jewish leaders made the statements despite evidence that Rice’s Rafah border deal has allowed terrorists to infiltrate the Gaza Strip, where they are poised to attack Israel. It also grants Gaza-based terrorists freedom to travel into the nearby Sinai desert where they can meet with regional jihadists – as officials say was the case with last week’s thwarted major bombing at the Karni crossing, the main cargo checkpoint between Gaza and Israel.

The Jewish leaders were also unapologetic after hearing that Israeli security officials are now calling Rice’s border agreement an “abject failure” that threatens the country’s security.

“We have absolutely no regrets. Of course not. It was the right thing. The Palestinians must have freedom of movement,” said Seymour Reich, president of the Israel Policy Forum.

Reich was one of several leftist Jewish leaders who pressed Rice during a meeting prior to her trip to Jerusalem this past November to pressure Israel into signing a deal regarding security at the Rafah crossing, the main checkpoint betwen Egypt at Gaza.

The deal transferred security of the crucial crossing from Israel to the Egyptians, Palestinians and European monitors.

The Europeans have fled their positions many times, and dozens of senior terrorists have openly entered Gaza through Rafah since the deal was implemented.

WND reported just before Rice brokered the deal in November that several leftist Jewish groups encouraged her to take a tough line with Israel against settlement expansion and involvement in Palestinian border affairs. A source close to those pressuring Rice said that one senior Jewish leftist leader told the secretary of state her tough stance against Israel would result in strong support from American Jews.

Lewis Roth, assistant director of Americans for Peace Now, said, “The fact of the matter is the Palestinians need some opening to the outside world. Rafah certainly provides the best arrangement. There are some issues that need to be addressed, but we still support the deal.”

*******

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not support withdrawing from the West Bank, and opposed unilaterally vacating any of the territories’ Jewish communities, according to one of Sharon’s closest confidantes.

Officials from the ruling Kadima party, which Sharon founded prior to his massive stroke in January, have been claiming for months that West Bank withdrawal was a policy initiated by Sharon.

“If he was fully functional today, Sharon would have told the world, ‘Look what we got from [withdrawing from Gaza and] making concessions for peace. So if you think I am going to give one inch of more land, you are very wrong,’” said author and columnist Uri Dan, who enjoyed a special relationship with the prime minister.

Kadima officials, including Ehud Olmert, have said many times that Sharon envisioned a West Bank withdrawal. During the weeks leading up to the election in March, Olmert said his victory would be a referendum on the Israeli public’s support for his withdrawal plan. One of the major slogans of Kadima’s election campaign featured a catch phrase that announced the party was “following in the footsteps of Ariel Sharon.”

“There is no greater insult to Sharon than these declarations, as he battles valiantly for his life in Hadassah hospital,” said Dan, who added that Sharon’s future policy supported President Bush’s road map, which calls for the dismantlement of Palestinian terror groups before negotiations can be conducted regarding any land transfers.

“But at a time like this, a promise of further withdrawals only encourages Hamas to intensify its extremist positions. …Would Sharon have gotten up and announced the fact at a time when Israel is waging an international struggle against Hamas’s legitimacy? Of course not,” said Dan.

There was no escaping the news of Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke last week. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, the Internet — all were chock full of breaking stories; backgrounders on Sharon’s life; sound bites from doctors, Israelis, Arabs, Jews in New York, and various Jewish organizational types desperately trying — without much success — to seem even a little bit relevant.

There were talking heads and prognosticators and analysts — whose knowledge of the Middle East in all too many cases, it rather quickly became apparent, consisted of whatever they were able to cram from that day’s issue of The New York Times or web edition of the Jerusalem Post.

If the coverage of Sharon’s condition was unrelentingly grim, the assessments of his accomplishments and place in history were almost without exception giddy — though even that may be too weak a word; adulatory is probably a better description of the encomiums heaped on a man who just a few years ago was viewed in European capitals and on college campuses everywhere as a mass-murdering war criminal.

Whatever one thinks of Sharon’s Gaza policy and his political migration from right to center, it’s instructive that the only way an Israeli prime minister can gain plaudits from world leaders, diplomats and journalists is by territorial retreat. Sharon’s elevation to greatness, after all, was strikingly similar to that of another former Israeli general credited with assuming the mantle of peacemaker late in life.

The truth is that before he signed the Oslo accords, Yitzhak Rabin was widely considered an uninteresting politician of middling capabilities whose prior term in office had been a melange of corruption and malaise; but when he was buried two years after Oslo — even as the false hopes generated by that agreement were already fading fast — the consensus among opinion-makers was that a giant had walked among us.

Sharon’s new popularity among some of Israel’s harshest critics was visible in the pages of newspapers in England and France, two countries where, if editorial cartoonists are an accurate measure of public opinion, he only recently was considered a villain on the level of bin Laden and Hitler.

Writing in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Colin Coughlin described the Gaza withdrawal as “an act that persuaded even his intractable critics that the old warrior had undergone a Damascus conversion. The hawk truly had begat the dove.”

An editorial in France’s liberal Le Monde praised Sharon’s “conversion to realism — so aptly illustrated in the Israeli pullout from Gaza,” which, the paper charmingly continued, “finally gave a chance for Palestine, which had until then been undermined by the Israeli colonization.”

The editorial then provided a revealing glimpse of just why Sharon had won such newfound admiration among those who prefer to put the onus for the Israeli-Arab conflict squarely on Israel: “Both in Europe and the United States [the hope was] that with such a man in power, withdrawal from the occupied territories would not end there.”

The Washington Post echoed Le Monde’s conviction that future Israeli withdrawals are the key to a brighter Middle East, though the editorial writer wondered whether even Sharon would have made enough concessions to satisfy Mahmoud Abbas and, well, the Post itself: “It was never clear whether [Sharon] was willing to give up enough, in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, to make possible an enduring settlement.”

That Sharon couldn’t do enough to sate the hostility of some of his longtime critics was evident in a column in the Guardian by the aging boy wonder of Israel’s peace brigades, the novelist Amos Oz. After complimenting Sharon for “smash[ing] the settlers in Gaza in the same blitzkrieg style in which he won his many wars,” Oz complained about the “One thing … Sharon never succeeded in doing, not even when he evacuated Gaza to the last inch. He never really sat down with the Palestinians to try to talk with them the way one neighbor speaks to the other neighbor.”

JERUSALEM – Doctors for Ariel Sharon, in releasing selected medical information this week, told reporters the Israeli prime minister, who suffered a mild stroke last week, is “in good health.” Sharon will also undergo a minor heart procedure next month.

Stroke experts, however, said that some of the information the doctors presented is “contradictory.” They say not enough is currently known about Sharon’s medical condition to independently determine whether the prime minister is fit to govern.

At a press conference held at Sharon’s direction, chief doctors for the Israeli leader said that for a “very brief time” Sharon was unable to make decisions after being rushed to the hospital last Sunday, and had difficulty speaking, but that by the next day he was “fine” and able to “fully serve as prime minister.”

Doctors said they discovered this week that Sharon has a microscopic hole in his heart that requires a catheterization procedure. The procedure takes about 40 minutes and requires partial sedation.

The doctors said the heart condition, which Sharon has had since birth, caused a clog that prompted last week’s stroke. They said Sharon is currently being injected twice daily with blood thinners.

Doctors insisted that Sharon’s stroke did not cause any permanent damage and that he is physically fit to continue serving as prime minister.

“There is no injury to the brain,” attending physician Tamir Ben-Hur, chief of neurology at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital, said. “The prime minister is in exactly the same state now as he was the day before he was hospitalized.”

Doctors did not release past medical files or the results of CAT scans or imaging tests from last week that would show whether Sharon suffered permanent damage. Reporters at the press conference were barred from taking photographs or videotaping documents.

Meanwhile, some leading stroke experts in the U.S. said they are skeptical of the announcements regarding Sharon’s ability to return to his hectic schedule.

Jonathan Leiff, a geriatric neuropsychiatrist and co-director of geriatrics specialty services at Saint Elizabeth Medical Center in Boston, said, “If Sharon was only suffering from symptoms such as loss of speech for such a brief time, I would not term that a stroke. A stroke is much more serious and presents symptoms for a longer period.

“What they are describing is more of an angiosciatic attack, which would be from a temporarily blocked blood vessel.

“But they are saying he did have a stroke, which implies something more serious. If it is indeed more serious, this would mean there is more to the story. More information that is not public,” said Lieff, who previously served as president of the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Richard Zorowitz, associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Pennsylvania, said that based on the information currently made public it is not possible to conclude anything concrete about Sharon’s condition.

The information presented by Sharon’s doctors – that there was a period in which the Israeli leader was unable to make decisions – was in conflictwith statements from senior aides immediately following Sharon’s stroke, who said Sharon was fully conscious during his entire hospitalization and was able to make decisions as head of state throughout his hospital stay.

According to a report on Israel’s state-run Channel 10, Sharon’s doctors today failed to disclose the prime minister is suffering from vision problems and is nearly blind in his left eye.

The doctors did note that the 77-year-old Sharon weighs 254 pounds, extremely overweight for his age and height.

Members of Sharon’s treatment team at Hadassah hospital, speaking confidentially to the Israeli media last week, reportedly said when Sharon departed the hospital he was still not at full capacity.

The Israeli daily Maariv quoted a team member as saying, “The prime minister did not know what day it was, what time is was or where he was. [The hospital officials] are not obligated to disclose everything, but to give inaccurate information is already taking a position and is very problematic. Throughout the first night of his hospitalization the confusion continued, to a lesser extent, and Sharon has not returned to himself completely.”

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was discharged from a Jerusalem hospital after reportedly suffering a minor stroke, with top aids repeatedly stating the prime minister suffered no damage, that his condition will not affect his ability to govern or run in upcoming elections, and that he can return to work within days.

But several stroke experts told WorldNetDaily that a minimum of several weeks of rehabilitation are necessary for the vast majority of minor stroke sufferers and that an immediate return to work was not recommended. They also said the prime minister may be at risk of recurring strokes.

Stanley Myers, vice-chair of the Columbia University department of rehabilitation medicine said, “It is important for Sharon to lay off serious stressful situations for at least a short period of time. He needs to avoid making big decisions right now.”

Henya Storch, a New York-based nurse specializing in stroke victims who previously coordinated stroke treatment for the Lubavitcher Rebbe, said normal symptoms following minor strokes include difficulty swallowing, impaired speech, problems with word retrieval and memory, trouble walking, paralysis and impairment of motor skills.

Storch said because Sharon is extremely overweight, he might be prone to several other complications, including bed sores and ulcers.

Richard Zorowitz, associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Pennsylvania, said it is “almost unheard of to send even the most minor of stroke patients back to work within days. At least a week, usually two or three, are needed.”

Zorowitz said a significant percentage of stroke sufferers are at risk for a repeat stroke within 90 days.

Little is known about Sharon’s exact medical condition. The Prime Minister’s Office refuses to release Sharon’s medical records or the results of radiation and imaging tests conducted this week. Multiple Israeli commentators from across the political spectrum have called Kadima a “one man party” and have warned a deterioration in Sharon’s health prior to March elections could negatively impact the party’s chances.

* * * *

Just days after Sharon denied statements to Newsweek by his principle campaign pollster that he intends to divide Jerusalem if he wins in upcoming elections, a senior minister and close Sharon ally refused to answer whether she would support relinquishing parts of the holy city to the Palestinians.

“My parents’ friends demand that I promise to say there won’t be a Palestinian state and that I promise to fight and prevent its establishment, but I’m not saying it,” said Justice Minister Tzipi Livni at a community gathering this past weekend.

Livni then repeatedly refused to respond to a question posed by a reporter about whether she would support splitting Jerusalem to create a Palestinian state.

Since Sharon’s formation of Kadima, a number of party members have stated their goal is to change Israel’s borders.

Top Kadima adviser Eli Landau recently said Sharon’s “decision [to form a new party] stems from his desire to bring the state ofIsrael to permanent borders during his term of office … He knows that this step will be a dramatic one.”

* * * *

The U.S. House of Representatives last Friday passed a resolution calling for a halt in funding to the Palestinians if Hamas wins upcoming parliamentary elections, but the American government is currently in the process of funding a Gaza town run by Hamas.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, in conjunction with the Islamic Development Bank, reportedly contributed $392,000 for construction of roads and public facilities in Bani Suhaila, a village outside the populated Palestinian city of Khan Yunis.

Hamas earlier this month won 13 out of 14 seats in Bani Suhaila’s local municipal elections. According to Israeli security sources, the terror group has long maintained a civilian infrastructure in the area consisting of Hamas-owned shopping centers, medical clinics and other public facilities. Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas’s Gaza chief, told WND his group is “absolutely in charge in Bani Suhaila. The Palestinian people have voted and told us in an open and fair manner that they want us to represent them and their interests.”

Anna Litvak, a public affairs officer for U.S. AID’s regional headquarters in Tel Aviv, said development of Bani Suhaila was in the works long before Hamas won the town’s elections. Asked if her agency will call off its Bani Suhaila development initiatives now that Hamas rules the municipality, Litvak replied, “The fact that the project is now located in a municipality run by Hamas doesn’t change things.”

* * * *

The father of Zachary Baumel, an American-born Israeli soldier who was captured by Syrian forces 23 years ago, is filing a lawsuit against the Syrian government for abduction and illegal imprisonment.

The move follows the release of new information indicating Baumel is being held in Syria, and comes after several failed attempts by Baumel’s father, Yona, to appeal directly to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The suit utilizes the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which contains a provision that allows U.S. citizens to sue governments supporting terrorism and collect judgments from any foreign governmental assets on American soil.

Yona Baumel and associate Stuart Ditchek previously tried to involve the Israeli government in their campaign. The two met with Sharon last September and were promised a letter stating Sharon supports their efforts to press for Zachary’s release, but the letter has not yet been written. Sources close to Sharon told WND the prime minister is reluctant to get involved.

“Bashar Assad is on his way out. Israel doesn’t want to give him the ability to make a gesture. And Sharon thinks if Assad offers to release Zach Baumel, Israel will be asked by the U.S. to make a similar gesture toward Assad,” said a political source.

Countered Ditchek: “The U.S. has made very clear they do not want to do anything that would help Syria. So Sharon’s excuse doesn’t make sense to me. Israel would not be pressured into anything. Releasing Zachary would be a one-way humanitarian gesture on the part of Syria.”

On the eve of the unilateral Gaza withdrawal, Ariel Sharon explained his action to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot:  “I’ve reached a deal with the Americans.  I prefer a deal with the Americans to a deal with the Arabs.”

            What, exactly, was that deal?  What did Israel receive for its disengagement plan?  And what — since Israel has now carried out its end of the bargain — does the United States owe Israel?

            The public record of the deal is the April 14, 2004 letter from George W. Bush.  Most attention has focused on two statements in that letter:  (1) it “seems clear” Palestinian refugees must be resettled in a Palestinian state rather than Israel, and (2) it is “unrealistic” to expect a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, in light of major Israeli population centers there.

            But the heart of Sharon’s deal is not in those two statements.  It is in three express assurances — contained elsewhere in the Bush letter — representing formal promises by the United States to Israel. 

            The significance of those promises has not been widely appreciated, perhaps because they cannot be fully understood without reference to Sharon’s letter to Bush dated the same day, and other matters external to the April 14 letters themselves. 

The April 14, 2004 Exchange of Letters

            Sharon’s disengagement plan arose from several convictions:  (1) unless Israel produced an alternative, the world would impose the Geneva Accord; (2) the Geneva Accord did not provide Israel defensible borders (and contained a “right of return,” purportedy limited, that would in practice de-legitimize Israel), and (3) Palestinian observance of such an agreement would be — to put it mildly — uncertain.

Faced with that conundrum, Sharon decided to negotiate with the United States instead.  He generated three promises in exchange for disengagement.

To understand the first promise in the Bush letter, it is necessary to review Sharon’s letter to him.  In his letter, Sharon was unusually specific with respect to the Roadmap, the three-phase “performance-based” plan formally accepted by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

            The Roadmap, Sharon stated in his letter, was a “practical and just formula” for the achievement of peace; it “sets forth the correct sequence and principles for the attainment of peace;” and — most importantly — it was the only plan:

Its full implementation represents the sole means to make genuine progress.  As you have stated, a Palestinian state will neverbe created by terror, and Palestinians must engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure. . . .  We are committed to this formula as the only avenue through which an agreement can be reached.  We believe that this formula is the only viable one. . . .

Progress toward this goal [of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement] must be anchored exclusively in the Roadmap and we will oppose any other plan.  [Emphasis added].

             Bush’s April 14 response gave three specific “reassurances” to Sharon — before turning to the now famous statements about refugees and the West Bank.  Bush stated he wanted to “reassure” Sharon that:

First, the United States remains committed to my vision and to its implementation as described in the roadmap.  The United States will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan.  Under the roadmap . . . . [t]he Palestinian leadership must act decisively against terror, including sustained, targeted, and effective operations to stop terrorism and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. . . .  [Emphasis added].

            Since “any other plan” could not conceivably be imposed against the will of the United States, Bush’s reassurance to Sharon — given the terms of Sharon’s letter — represented a promise the Roadmap would in fact be the “sole means” to make progress and the “only viable” formula.

Phase I of the Roadmap includes a requirement — expressly referenced in both Sharon’s letter and Bush’s response — of “sustained, targeted, and effective operations to . . . dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.”  There can be no Palestinian state

(even with provisional borders) in Phase II, nor any final status negotiations in Phase III, unless and until Phase I of the Roadmap is completed.

            Israel has its own obligations under Phase I, primarily the removal of settlement “outposts” constructed since March 2001, freezing settlement activity, and — as security performance progresses — withdrawal of Israeli forces to the positions held on September 28, 2000.  In many respects Israel has already exceeded these obligations, even though its formal position is that things are still in a pre-Roadmap status.[1]  In any event, as Condoleezza Rice recently explained in an interview with the New York Times:

“[T]he roadmap is assiduously not sequencing one step after another.  It gives, in parallel, certain obligations to both sides.  And the obligation of the Palestinians has to do with the dismantling of terrorist infrastructure and organizations and they’re going to have to do it.”  [Emphasis added].

            The first promise of the Bush letter was thus that the only avenue forward would be the dismantlement of Palestinian terrorist capabilities and infrastructure — before any negotiations on borders, refugees, Jerusalem or any other final status issues.

II.  The Second Promise.

            In his second reassurance to Sharon, Bush reiterated again the central importance of dismantling terrorist organizations, and then proceeded to address Israel’s future borders.  Bush reassured Sharon that:

Second, there will be no security for Israelis or Palestinians until they and all states, in the region and beyond, join together to fight terrorism and dismantle terrorist organizations.  The United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats.  [Emphasis added]

            The reference to dismantling terrorist organizations re-emphasized the critical importance of Bush’s first promise.  But the central part of the second promise was the endorsement — as an explicit part of the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security — of “secure, defensible borders” that would enable Israel to “defend itself, by itself.”

            The concept of “secure, defensible borders” is a strategic doctrine significantly different from the theory of “land for peace” that underlay the Geneva Accord.[2]  The Geneva Accord presumed that a return to the 1967 borders (with very minor changes) would, in exchange for a peace agreement, produce peace. 

            But what if it didn’t?  What if it simply returned Israel to what Abba Eban famously characterized as “Auschwitz borders,” and simply set the stage for the next war?

            The concept of “secure, defensible borders” recognizes that Israeli security ultimately depends on borders Israel can defend on its own, even if the Palestinians do not honor their agreement, or there is a future dispute with a Palestinian state. 

            Such borders are also important because they do not depend on third-party guarantees by the U.N. or others — a mechanism that failed spectacularly in 1967.

            Moreover, defensible borders are also an important American interest, because the last thing the U.S. wants is to place American troops in a dangerous situation to secure the “peace,” or to obligate itself to defend Israeli borders not defensible by Israel itself. 

            Finally, borders that are not militarily defensible are themselves an invitation to the aggression supposedly foresworn in a “peace agreement.” 

            Defensible borders are thus indispensable to insure that any ultimate “agreement” will actually work.

The concept of “defensible borders” had been contained in U.N. Resolution 242 in 1967, whose heavily negotiated terms had intentionally referred to a withdrawal from “territories” — not “all the territories” — and which expressly envisioned “secure and recognized boundaries” for Israel.  

            But over the years, land for “secure and recognized boundaries” became land for “peace” — with Palestinians demanding a total withdrawal to the indefensible 1967 borders as the price of the promised “peace.” 

            The “land for peace” mindset reached its apogee with the December 23, 2000 Clinton Parameters, which envisioned a virtually total withdrawal from the West Bank in exchange for “peace” (with an “international presence” to “monitor” it).  Once they were rejected, Clinton had stipulated his parameters were “off the table,” and said they represented a personal proposal that was gone once he left office.  But they led instead to the disastrous Taba negotiations, and reappeared again in the form of the Geneva Accord. 

III.  The Third Promise

            Bush’s third assurance reiterated again the central importance of the dismantlement of terrorist organizations — and then not only endorsed it as a matter of American policy but promised to lead efforts to achieve it.  Bush reassured Sharon that: 

Third, Israel will retain its right to defend itself against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organizations.  The United States will lead efforts, working together with Jordan, Egypt, and others in the international community, to build the capacity and will of Palestinian institutions to fight terrorism, dismantle terrorist organizations, and prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means.  [Emphasis added].

In other words, dismantlement of terrorist organizations was now not simply an Israeli demand on the Palestinians, but part of an American commitment to “lead efforts” to achieve it.  Israel not only retained the right to act against terrorist groups in Gaza; it received a promise the U.S. would “lead efforts” to prevent Gaza from posing a threat in the first place.

The Permanent Status Agreement

            The two famous statements in Bush’s letter relate to the final status agreement envisioned in Phase III of the Roadmap, which is intended to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on specified UN resolutions and a “realistic” solution to the final status issues.  The Roadmap envisions a settlement:

negotiated between the parties based on [UN Resolutions] 242, 338, and 1397, that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and includes an agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue, and a negotiated resolution on the status of Jerusalem that takes into account the political and religious concerns of both sides, and protects the religious interests of Jews, Christians, and Muslims worldwide, and fulfills the vision of two states, Israel and sovereign, independent, democratic and viable Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security.  [Emphasis added].

            The Bush letter also states that, in light of major Israeli population centers, complete withdrawal from the West Bank is “unrealistic.”  Although phrased as a statement of fact (rather than as a promise to Israel), the letter acknowledges what can realistically be expected from final status negotiations.

Conclusion

            Sharon’s deal was thus to exchange disengagement for the following American promises:  (1) no political discussions with the Palestinians before they dismantle terrorist organizations and infrastructure; (2) no return to indefensible Auschwitz borders, but only to borders Israel can defend without reliance on Palestinian promises or third-party guarantees; and (3) American led efforts to insure Gaza does not threaten Israel.

Moreover, the U.S. reinforced these reassurances with a formal commitment to the Roadmap — with its dismantlement requirement in Phase I — as the exclusive way forward, not to be replaced by any other plan. 

Finally, the U.S. acknowledged what a “realistic” peace agreement would entail on the critical issues of refugees and West Bank population centers, and a “realistic” agreement is a requirement of the Roadmap.

            Was this a good deal for Israel?  Maybe, maybe not — reasonable people can differ.  But what we do know for sure is that:

land; and destroying the homes, jobs and societies of nearly 10,000 citizens (equivalent to 450,000 people in the U.S.). 

            Second, having effected a difficult, dangerous and traumatic disengagement, Israel has performed its end of the deal, and perfected its right to what it negotiated:  Palestinian dismantlement as a precondition to further negotiations, ultimate West Bank withdrawal only to defensible borders, American-led efforts to prevent a Gaza threat, and — most importantly — no new plan once the Palestinians miss their final opportunity with this one.

Tags: agreement, borders, Israel, organizations, Palestinians, peace, Sharon, United States, West Bank
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