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The screaming and shouting by opponents of disengagement and the settlement lobby is creating an image of the prime minister being a man of the political center. Their threats and accusations are painting him with the colors of a persecuted peacemaker, so much so that kibbutzniks in the north are joining the Likud to help the man who sprang forth from their very tradition of farming the land, Ariel Sharon. That may be marginal, but it says something about the sympathy on that part of the electorate that regards itself as moderate, and supports a political compromise with the Palestinians and a two-state solution.
Support and sympathy from parts of the Israeli peace camp for the disengagement is a dangerous part of the plan because it enables Sharon and his partners in his world view to continue executing their real plan and to do so without public criticism, without protests, without effective opposition. Their goal is control over as much of the West Bank as possible, without Arabs or with as few Arabs as possible, and the continued expansion of settlements that separate Palestinian population centers from each other. In that vision, the Palestinians are not a nation with national rights over their land, which is entirely under Israeli control, but a collection of individual communities, and the Israeli ruler is preparing a different future for each one of those communities: two of them, in Gaza and the northern West Bank, will soon enjoy an Israeli "withdrawal."
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