Withdrawal? Not quite yet

摘要

Its arm painfully twisted, Ariel Sharon's cabinet declared on June 6th its "intent" to remove the 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip, plus four outlying ones in the northern West Bank, by the end of 2005. The prime minister got his way, but in the process had to bargain away the operational clauses in the plan he first introduced six months, ago. The cabinet's text states explicitly that it is not authorising the removal of any settlement, merely a detailed planning process. When the planning is completed, but before any actual evacuation begins, the whole matter has to be brought once again before the cabinet for its approval. Even to get this far has involved a mighty struggle with the ideologues of Greater Israel, and a remarkable volte-face by Mr Sharon himself; a year ago he would have dismissed the very idea of evacuation as a surrender to Palestinian terrorism-as many of his colleagues do now. A month ago, his own Likud party faithful re-jected the plan in a referendum. But the prime minister, proving again his powers of survival, did not acknowledge defeat.