The next elected Labor prime minister, Ehud Barak, similarly promised that he would wrap up this silly conflict post haste. He yanked Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon, turning it over to Hizbullah while abandoning Israel’s allies there; then at Camp David he offered Yasser Arafat the store, and instead received an even worse reign of terror that killed four hundred in one year (2002) and continues to this day.

Although Ariel Sharon’s disengagement has subjected a region of pre-1967 Israel to a constant rocket barrage with no military solution in sight, brought Al Qaeda to Gaza and the West Bank, opened the way to Egypt’s remilitarization of the Sinai, and led to the Hamas victory in the PA elections, there is at least much evidence that Sharon would have been far more careful about any further withdrawals.

Not so his successor, Ehud Olmert, who made his convergence plan the centerpiece of his speech on Thursday inaugurating his new government. Olmert wants to realize his plan fast—before presumed supporter George W. Bush leaves office—and in breathtaking defiance of coalitional, economic, security, and much other logic.

1. Coalition. Olmert’s coalition now stands at 67 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Of the 67, 55 seats belong to three more or less pro-convergence parties, Kadima, Labor, and the Pensioners. (Although many in Kadima and Labor have serious reservations about the plan, based on the precedent of the “Oslo process” they can be expected to fall in line—unlike many Likud opponents of the disengagement who did stick to their guns.)

The other 12 seats in the coalition, though, go to Shas, an ultra-religious party with a hawkish electorate that will not take kindly to Olmert’s idea of forcibly removing tens of thousands of Jews from the heart of the Land of Israel. Indeed, the deal between Shas and Olmert’s party, Kadima, specifically exempts Shas from supporting the plan.

Even if Olmert can eventually get the one other more or less pro-convergence party, leftist Meretz with its five mandates, to join the coalition, between Kadima, Labor, Pensioners, and Meretz he would still only have 60—one short of a majority of the Knesset. If push comes to shove, with Shas leaving and Meretz (possibly) in, Olmert will not be able to pass the plan except by relying on outside support from the three Arab parties with their 10 seats.

These parties include MKs such as Azmi Bishara, who said last December at a book fair in Lebanon: “I will never recognize Zionism, even if all Arabs do… I will never concede Palestine. The battle will long continue”; and Taleb A-Sanaa, who recently drew the Knesset’s ire for a solidarity meeting with a Hamas member in East Jerusalem.

It would be appalling for Olmert to push through such a divisive plan based on outside support from these parties. But that is what he would have to do.

2. Economy. As Caroline Glick notes,

“Olmert has put a price tag of $10 billion on his withdrawal plan. Many Israeli economists have claimed that this is a gross underestimate of the actual cost of the massive withdrawals he has planned and the dislocation of between 50,000-100,000 Israeli civilians. Nonetheless, Israel’s new prime minister is hoping that the Congress will agree to have US taxpayers cover the bill.”

Even if there is any chance of Bush agreeing—which seems unlikely, especially since funds that were supposed to assist Sharon’s disengagement never materialized under the pressure of the Hurricane Katrina crisis—Israel’s pride and independence are at stake here. It is one thing for a small democracy outnumbered by its enemies to receive military and economic aid from a superpower. It is another thing for this small democracy to build dozens of communities in areas considered sacred by many Jews as well as Christians, then announce: “We changed our minds—we’re destroying them. Would you pay for this, please?”

But in his visit to Washington three weeks from now, that is more or less what Olmert will be saying.

3. Security. Olmert’s new minister of internal security is Avi Dichter, former head of the General Security Service (GSS) and key strategist of the counterattack on terror that Israel began to mount in 2002, which significantly reduced the terror’s success rate and had Hamas on the ropes in 2004 before it was allowed to recover.

Although Dichter accepts the removal of West Bank settlements, Yossi Klein Halevi in The New Republic called him the Kadima Party’s “most outspoken opponent of unilateral [military] withdrawal in the West Bank” and quoted him as saying: “You can’t compare the West Bank to Gaza. . . . Gaza is not close to major [Israeli] population centers; the opposite is true in the West Bank. . . .  There’s no chance we will allow the West Bank to become a kingdom of terror.”

Last February 6 Dichter’s successor as head of the GSS, Yuval Diskin,

“expressed opposition to the government’s policy of unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip…’The political echelon can decide what it wants,’ Diskin said. ‘But from a security point of view I am against giving land to the Palestinians, even that territory that is [already] under their control, unless we know that there is a Palestinian source that assumes power and imposes order. If there isn’t such a source, from a professional viewpoint, I am against the transfer of territory to Palestinian control.’”

As reported last week by Haaretz’s military correspondent Amir Oren, a new internal study by the Israel Defense Forces agrees. The study concludes, in Oren’s summary, that

“following the [Gaza] evacuation, operations of the kind mounted [in Gaza] from 2000 to 2005 are no longer effective. . . . It follows from this also that the IDF, even if it will not dare say so explicitly, for fear of invading the political echelon’s terrain, believes that the pullout from Gaza—in the chosen format—was a mistake. A more correct evacuation, and the model for the future, occurred in the northern West Bank [where settlements were evacuated without a military withdrawal]. If there will be another evacuation, by government decision, the IDF will recommend using that model."

In other words, Israeli top brass explicitly oppose withdrawing Israeli forces from the areas supposed to be cleared of both civilians and soldiers under Olmert’s plan.

One may ask, then, how Olmert can keep pursuing a plan that so egregiously flouts political, economic, and strategic reality. And there are yet other grave problems with it. One is the totally unfounded assumption that the U.S., and even the EU, would put a stamp of permanency on the settlement blocs that would remain after the “convergence” so that Israel would not someday enter final-status negotiations with not much left to give except Jerusalem itself. Another is the destabilization of Jordan. Still another is the horrendous civil strife that is certain to result from evicting such a large number of settlers. One has a right to oppose settlement for demographic or other reasons; one does not have a right to pursue settlement, encouraging people to build their lives in places they consider sacred, then come one day with thousands of troops to drag them away and pulverize their homes and synagogues.

To understand why an Israeli prime minister is capable of contemplating all this, it helps to grasp that Israel is a community under stress where leaders like Rabin, Barak, and Olmert seize upon an idée fixe and then pursue it without regard for results, no matter how dire these turn out to be.  The best thing George Bush can say to Olmert in three weeks is: “Your plan is a formula for strife and the further empowerment of terror. Go home, have the courage to tell your people to dig in and be strong, and that you have no magic solution for the siege.”

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