has been acting to reinforce the concept of Israel as the Jewish national home. Israeli representatives overseas have also been directed to reinforce this idea.

At the same time, Israel's diplomatic representatives overseas are also directed to stress the importance of a Palestinian state as part of the framework in which the Palestinian refugee problem would be solved.

. . . The foreign minister also noted the government’s main policy is to advance the concept of two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with Israel acting as the national home of the Jewish people and the Palestinian state serving as a national solution for the Palestinian people.

Translation: Israel is good; it will do what is demanded of it; just don’t ask us to take in Palestinian “refugees,” O.K.?

The government's line, however, is increasingly coming under fire from mainstream Israeli voices not at all associated with the Right. One such is Giora Eiland, outgoing head of Israel’s National Security Council and former head of operations in the IDF, who said in a Haaretz interview this week:

I think that between the [Mediterranean] sea and the [Jordan] river there is not enough area to contain two states, and I think that in order to maintain a defensible border, Israel needs at least 12 percent of the West Bank. The 1967 lines, even the Clinton Plan, do not give Israel defensible borders. . . . I argue that even a Palestinian state with 100 percent of the Gaza Strip and 97 percent of the West Bank is not viable. Such a country will be poor, radical, restive, [and] the demographic pressures will be unbearable. . . .  The Palestinian state will be a radical Hamas state, not satisfied and not viable. There will be continuous instability. . . .  The disengagement contributed nothing to the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.. . . The move along a unilateral path leads us to the classic solution of two states for two peoples, and I think this is an impossible solution.   

Although Eiland’s words prompted demands by Knesset members, one of whom called them a “political-defense bombshell,” for an urgent Knesset debate, there is no sign that the single-minded government takes any interest in his statements.

Within the government, though, there is also dissent at the blind unilateralism that sets up fully armed, autonomous jihadist enclaves on Israel’s borders in the name of resolving the conflict. In Sunday’s cabinet meeting Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, who just a few months ago was praising the disengagement plan after seeming to oppose it while he was head of the General Security Service in the Sharon government, called for “step[ped]-up operations in Gaza and reoccupy[ing] territories there to prevent ongoing Qassam attacks on the western Negev.” Reacting partly to a near-hit last week on the home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz in the Gaza-bordering town of Sderot, Dichter “demanded the prime minister stop Qassam fire from northern Gaza at any cost” and said: “We need to return the balance of deterrence.”

Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Peretz, though, were not impressed, the latter saying that “Occupying parts of Gaza is irrelevant” and the former: “We have severe means in our arsenal, but sometimes, with international consideration, they are not effective. It is not good to hurt civilians, and therefore—anti-terror activity combines a few considerations. We must weigh what is effective and when.”

Translation: in the name of our grand strategy of unilateral withdrawal, a situation of six years of shelling of Israeli communities is tolerable, but the possibility of harming Palestinian civilians in a military operation is unthinkable.

The “tolerable” situation continued Tuesday morning as five more rockets hit Sderot, one landing near a school and wounding a woman with shrapnel, another landing in a child’s room in a house.

Other dissenting voices can be added, such as Haaretz’s left-leaning Arab-affairs analyst Danny Rubinstein: 

Even the most fervent supporters of the disengagement cannot argue that Israel's security situation has improved since the pullout. . . .  The firing of rockets is likely to intensify, and both the means and the know-how for more sophisticated missiles [are] also reaching the Gaza Strip.

This precarious security situation needs to be considered, especially when the government of Ehud Olmert is planning to implement a plan which, although not identical to that of the Gaza pullout, is similar to it. . . . when the convergence plan relies on the building of walls and separation fences—it is certainly plausible to expect that the day will come when missiles are launched against Israeli targets from the West Bank, too.

Or left-wing army officer Shaul Arieli, who was brigade commander in the Gaza Strip:

we have adopted an approach in which we unilaterally draw a line in the sand to define the borders of the Jewish state. This is complete folly. . . . Olmert is not, at this stage, planning a full IDF withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, but a significant removal of bases and settlements would be enough to ignite those forces opposed to an agreement with Israel.. . .  any Israeli attempt to set borders without Palestinian agreement will be doomed to failure. . . .  

Although it appears beyond the grasp of Olmert, Peretz, and Livni, the problem with the new unilateralist syndrome is simple. The recent arrests in Toronto and London of jihadists planning mega-terror attacks were made possible by those governments’ sovereign control of the places where the terrorists operated. Neither Canada nor Britain would consider for a moment setting up a Jihadistan, devoid or nearly devoid of their own security forces, on the borders of those cities.

Meanwhile Geostrategy-Direc.com, in a report on Israel’s recent arrest of West Bank Hamas commander Ibrahim Hamed, notes that:

Hamed . . .  represents the new face of Hamas. The organization is no longer local but has become a regional arm of Iran and Syria in the effort to destabilize pro-U.S. regimes in the region. . . .  Hamed’s plan was to strike strategic facilities in Israel. He believed that a string of mass-casualty attacks would bring Israel to its knees and force a hasty withdrawal from the West Bank. As a result, Hamas targeted major office buildings, railroads and energy facilities in the Jewish state.

And Amos Harel writes on Tuesday in Haaretz:

Hamas operatives in the West Bank have experimented with adding toxic chemicals to their bombs, security sources told Haaretz. . . . The sources said Hamas’s West Bank cells include several skilled bombmakers who are investing great effort in trying to upgrade their weapons. The organization also is amassing large stocks of explosives so operatives will be ready to launch attacks immediately should its leadership decide to end the security “lull,” the sources added. . . . “The tendency is to prepare ‘mega-attacks’ that would create a new balance” of power with Israel. Currently, Hamas’ West Bank cells are focusing mainly on buying arms, training operatives, setting up explosives factories and conducting experiments.

Friends of Israel with access to Israel’s current leaders should try to persuade them that under such circumstances, retreat is a suicidal direction.

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