Sharon was planning diplomatic moves beyond Gaza, leaked documents reveal

U.S. cables, Palestinian papers quote then-Israeli prime minister eyeing negotiated withdrawals from West Bank.

By , HAARETZ
Ariel Sharon and Moshe Dayan

Ever since Ariel Sharon sank into a coma eight years ago, many have wondered whether he would have taken the peace process with the Palestinians any further after the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

A series of cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department that were leaked to Wikileaks show that in fact, even before the Gaza withdrawal, Sharon was planning his next big diplomatic move. Moreover, leaked Palestinian documents show that after Yasser Arafat’s death in November 2004, and even more so once Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian president the following January, Sharon made efforts to coordinate the Gaza withdrawal with the Palestinian Authority.

The disengagement plan was approved by the Knesset on October 26, 2004, after a stormy debate. Only a month later, on November 30, 2004, Sharon hosted two U.S. senators in his office – Chuck Hagel, who is now defense secretary, and Joe Biden, now vice president. According to an American cable, Sharon stressed to Biden and Hagel that he was committed to making peace with the Palestinians despite the major domestic struggles he would face “from a left that has no power, and a right which was totally opposed to his initiative.” Sharon told them that the post-Arafat era had presented “a new opportunity” to coordinate the Gaza withdrawal with the Palestinians. The report added that Sharon assured them that if disengagement went off successfully, the Road Map could then be implemented in stages, as had been envisioned by then-U.S. President George W. Bush.

On December 27, 2004, Sharon met with Sen. Joseph Lieberman and told him that after disengagement, he wanted to return to implementing the Road Map, on condition that the Palestinians fight terror. “Israel does not expect Abu Mazen [Abbas] to be a Zionist, but steps need to be taken against terrorism,” he said.

In his summary of that meeting, then-U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer makes it clear that Sharon had no intention of stopping with the Gaza withdrawal, but planned to take far-reaching steps in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Kurtzer noted that Sharon put emphasis on annexing the major settlement blocs, implying he would concede other parts of the West Bank, and that while he would not even discuss dividing Jerusalem, he would consider handing over some Arab neighborhoods, “but not the Temple Mount, Mount of Olives or the City of David.”

Two weeks later, on January 10, 2005, Sharon again met with U.S. senators, including Biden. According to Kurtzer’s summary, Sharon said, “If Palestinians do their part on security, Israel and the Palestinians can return to the Road Map. A final settlement might take a few years, but it can be achieved.”

Meanwhile, documents from the Palestine Liberation Organizationnegotiations department, which were leaked in January 2011 to Al-Jazeera, reveal that after Abbas was elected Palestinian president in 2005, Sharon attempted to coordinate the Gaza pullout with the PA. On February 8, 2005, Sharon and Abbas held a summit at Sharm al-Sheikh that was meant to mark the end of the second intifada and a new start between Israelis and Palestinians. The six-page Arabic protocol of the meeting shows that the encounter was positive and the atmosphere almost playful at times.

Abbas told Sharon that he was determined to assert control over the security situation, battle the smuggling through Gaza tunnels, and stop incitement against Israel in the Palestinian media. He also asked Sharon to release the pre-Oslo security prisoners, the same prisoners whom Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu would finally release over eight years later. Abbas also suggested setting up a covert channel for holding talks on a permanent arrangement.

Sharon, in turn, offered to withdraw the Israeli army from several Palestinian cities and take down roadblocks. He did not agree to release the prisoners Abbas wanted, but agreed to free 900 others. He also made it clear that unless the Palestinians cracked down on terror, there could be no diplomatic progress. “I’m determined to carry out the disengagement and I want it to be coordinated with you, particularly with regard to security and property,” Sharon said. “We must tighten our security cooperation. I want to do big things but I cannot accept terror.”

Three months later, Sharon began losing his patience. On May 30, 2005, he met with several members of Congress, telling them that the previous night a rocket fired from Gaza had landed near the entrance to a packing house on his ranch. According to Kurtzer’s report, Sharon stressed that the Gaza rockets were causing the Israeli public to lose faith in him, and that “his internal situation is exacerbated by every act of terror.”

Three weeks later, on June 22, 2005, only two months before disengagement, Sharon, Abbas and their advisers met again, this time at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem. It was a far less pleasant meeting than the one three months before. A summary document written by the PLO negotiations department states that Abbas and his advisers left the meeting frustrated, calling the meeting a recycling of the Sharm al-Sheikh arrangements.

According to the document, Sharon spent the first 15 minutes of the meeting complaining about the Palestinians’ lack of willingness to fight terror, saying that Abbas “failed to live up to his promise.” In attempt to thwart these accusations, Abbas said that violence is not a Palestinian interest and that “every bullet that is aimed in the direction of Israel is a bullet aimed at the Palestinians as well.”

“In the end, the only deliverable Abu Mazen could report was an agreement to issue more [work] permits,” the Palestinian summary states. “There was no agreement on prisoners, no progress on the airport, nothing on easing movement in the West Bank, and nothing on the internal closures.”

Still, the document notes, Sharon hinted that if there was calm during the disengagement operation, “Israel will be able to take further steps in the future. If there are terror attacks, however, the disengagement will be put on hold.”

Half a year after that meeting with Abbas, Sharon suffered a minor stroke, and three weeks later a major cerebral hemorrhage from which he never recovered. It’s hard to know whether and how he would have implemented the plans he had sketched out to the Americans and the Palestinians. The documents show that Sharon became increasingly skeptical about the Palestinians as disengagement got closer. Nevertheless, he did not at the time correctly assess what would happen only two years later, after his debilitation.

In a meeting on March 14 with U.S. Senator Carl Levin, Sharon said he did not expect Hamas to take over Gaza after Israel withdrew. He asserted that Hamas was worried that Israel would hit it harder after withdrawing because the Israeli government would no longer have to take the safety of the Gaza settlers into account.

January 13, 2014 | 39 Comments »
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39 Comments / 39 Comments

  4. honeybee Said:

    I shall never dispute with you again:

    Little Darlin, you are a wise Texas Lady, but I hope you will continue to try, I love the challenge.

  7. honeybee Said:

    I bet my grocery money on you today???????? Keepup the good work. You wern’t posting “hate speech” we’re you????Darlin

    I hope you won’t go hungry. I never post hate speech, only truth as I see it.

  8. @ NormanF:

    Since Yamit I have never believed in our political establishment. What they did in Yamit will be repeated. It’s only a matter of time and circumstances.

    Our sages taught that our past is the guide post to our future.

    Jews never learn from the past and will always repeat their errors.

    My only advice of those settlers and any who wish to follow their example is: Caveat emptor

  11. Felix Quigley Said:

    Source please! Such a key time and a key interview, including also the position of the NYT…

    Felix I am the source and I learned it was published in the NYT by my sister who lives in NYC and she wrote to inform me she saw the interview.

    As for the interview, due your own homework and check out their archives. I think I have given you enough to do a competent search. Go for it!!! I don’t claim to be prescient only rational and logical. During that time there were hundreds of Interviews of residents in Pitchat Rafiach and many voiced similar views as my own… it was a fairly common opinion among the settlers at that time. I can say this we did more to prevent the government from carrying out their plan than any of those from the settlements in Y&S and Gush Katif. I was also on record of saying that when the demonstrators announced they would not resist the evacuation by violence against the IDF I said all was lost and that the residents should pack up and get the best deal they could negotiate. My reasoning being that only the THREAT of believable violent civil disobedience could move the government, at least make them pause before actually implementing their decisions.
    Stories on Yamit’s beginning and last days
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7AYiRRareA
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiLREAnJWYM
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OEv79xlAEk
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5npYjZXRv5E

  12. Felix Quigley Said:

    Source please! Such a key time and a key interview, including also the position of the NYT…

    Felix I am the source and I learned it was published in the NYT by my sister who lives in NYC and she wrote to inform me she saw the interview.

    As for the interview, due your own homework and check out their archives. I think I have given you enough to do a competent search. Go for it!!! I don’t claim to be prescient only rational and logical. During that time there were hundreds of Interviews of residents in Pitchat Rafiach and many voiced similar views as my own… it was a fairly common opinion among the settlers at that time. I can say this we did more to prevent the government from carrying out their plan than any of those from the settlements in Y&S and Gush Katif. I was also on record of saying that when the demonstrators announced they would not resist the evacuation by violence against the IDF I said all was lost and that the residents should pack up and get the best deal they could negotiate. My reasoning being that only the THREAT of believable violent civil disobedience could move the government, at least make them pause before actually implementing their decisions.
    Stories on Yamit’s beginning and last days
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7AYiRRareA
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiLREAnJWYM
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OEv79xlAEk

  14. Felix Quigley Said:

    Source please!

    Um… Yamit IS the source!

    Such a key time and a key interview, including also the position of the NYT…

    What if the interview was never published to begin with?

    Anyway, what difference does it make?

  15. Before the final phase of the Sinai withdrawal in 1979, I gave an interview in the NYT. I remember saying “that if the withdrawal of Sinai was not stopped, there would be more of the same elsewhere in Y&S and eventually in Israel proper.”

    Source please! Such a key time and a key interview, including also the position of the NYT…

  16. @ yamit82:

    Yesha’s leaders thought Sharon would protect them. In the end, he betrayed them. And there is no reason to believe the Israeli government won’t sell them out again in the future.

  22. yamit82 Said:

    You can have a third choice,that other me, known as…..

    What did you think I’d chose??????
    The other two a Brit or a Canuk give me a break!!!!!!!!

  33. Shy Guy Said:

    Sharon’s legacy: Judenrein!

    Before the final phase of the Sinai withdrawal in 1979, I gave an interview in the NYT. I remember saying “that if the withdrawal of Sinai was not stopped, there would be more of the same elsewhere in Y&S and eventually in Israel proper.” The precedent for ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homes by the Israeli government began in Sinai and the Sinai settlements.

    Most of the Jewish followers or their parents and certainly the leadership of the then ‘Gush Emunim’ (Block of the faithful) ,religious right-wing activist movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements … did little to oppose Begin and were promised support for more settlements if they would not oppose Begin, at least not too strongly. They arrived in their hundreds only towards the end when it was already a fait accompli and then mostly school kids with few adults. They put on a show and tell for the press which the press turned public opinion against Yamit’s settlers and built up Begin’s image in the country and in the foreign press. Much like Sharon did with Gush Katif. (It was Sharon as DM under Begin that planned and carried out the destruction of Jewish settlements in Sinai and the evacuation of the IDF. Some say Begin would never have caved to Carter if Sharon had not given his approval to Begin, which he did.

    Understand that the settlement enterprise exists today on the bones so to speak of Yamit and the destroyed settlements of Sinai, that was the devils deal they made with Begin. Those that didn’t oppose and even approved have paid the price later like in Gush Katif and Y&S. When, yes when, the government decides to give up on Y&S settlement they can blame themselves by not opposing Begin and supporting the Likud and the then National Religious Party. I could have moved to one of the new settlements after Yamit that were built farther north on the Gaza Israel border but still in Gaza. I told them I no longer have faith in any government in Israel and I will never put myself in a position where they can bulldoze my home again.

    I told those from the Yamit area evacuees not to move to Katif settlements as what the government did to us in Yamit they will eventually do to them. I was right and those that still wanted to believe paid the price some twice over once in Yamit and then in Gush Katif. Stupid Suckers!!!!

  36. Appears Sharon’s timely stroke mirrors the death of Stalin. Not exactly the same but it’s interesting to note the similarities of timely death by leaders of Russia and Israel not their individual deaths but in it’s prevention re: The Jews.

    After Stalin’s death the whole world would hear of the deportation planned by Stalin.

    ** Stalin died eve. of Purim**

    Professor B. Goldberg noted in his book “The Jewish Problem in the Soviet Union” that ‘Stalin’s plan to send the Jews to Siberia reached the West after his death.’ And in “The Jews of the Soviet Union” Benjamin Pinkus, professor of Jewish history at Ben-Gurion University, wrote that ‘Stalin saw in the trial [of the doctors] a way to prepare the ground for exiling the Jewish population from the center of the Soviet Union.’ ‘Only Stalin’s death saved the Jews from this fate.’ (The little Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, ‘Anti-Semitism.’)

    In Siberia and Kazakhstan people still point out the remains of the flimsy wooden huts, without heating, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were meant to live, or rather to die.” “March 5 was the day on which he intended to lead the world into the Apocalypse, and to destroy the chosen people. But March 5 was the day on which he would close his eyes forever. It was his turn at last to discover that God does exist.”

    “The Doctors’ Plot was a terrible and tragic irony. Only ten years before, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews living in the western part of the country had been
    murdered by Hitler. Hundreds of thousands more had deliberately fled from Poland to the Soviet Union, looking for refuge from the Nazis. Nevertheless, Stalin spent his
    final, dying years planning another series of show trials, another wave of mass executions, and another wave of deportations. He may even have planned, ultimately,
    to deport all Jews resident in the Soviet Union’s major cities to Central Asia andSiberia. Fear and paranoia swept across the country once again. Terrified Jewish
    intellectuals signed a petition, condemning the doctors. Hundreds more Jewish doctors were arrested. Other Jews lost their jobs, as a waveof bitter anti-Semitism swept
    across the country. In her faraway Karaganda exile, Olga Adamova-Sliozberg heard local women gossip about packages sent to the post office by with Jewish names. Allegedly, they had been found to contain cotton balls, riddled with typhus-bearing lice. In Kargopollag, in his camp north of A, Isaak Filshtinskii also heard rumors that Jewish prisoners were to be sent to special camps in the far north. Then, just as the Doctors’ Plot looked set to send tens of thousands of new prisoners into camps and into exile, just as the noose was tightening around Beria and his henchmen, and just as the Gulag had entered what appeared to be an insurmountable economic crisis – Stalin died.” So it seems that, had Stalin not died, the Soviet-Jews would have had a similar fate as the Kulaks from 1930 to 1932.

  38. @ Shy Guy:

    Ariel Sharon was a sociopath who put Israel at risk to strengthen his own hold on power. He is the father of Hamastan and the nearly four years of delibiltating terrorist rocket assault upon Israel that took place after the Disengagement. He did not bring Israel peace but the wages of war.