This is not good.

Mark Rouleau
rouleau-law@afo.net

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Israeli gov't admits: US Pressures Determine Retreat Policy

David Bedein, Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron Int'l
Press Center, Jerusaem. Tel. 02 5300125

The U.S. Department has made it clear to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: It
wants the Jews out of the Katif district of Gaza by August 15th, with no
excuses.

The Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, came to Jerusalem and
pleaded with Sharon to reconsider his plan to retreat from Katif, which
involves Israel's obliteration of the 21 Jewish communities there,
i! ncluding 325 thriving Jewish farms and 86 synagogues and Jewish study centers

Sharon's answer to Rabbi Cohen: "This is what the U.S. State Department is
demanding that I do, and I must do it".

It does not matter that half of the 9000 Jews who live in Katif have no
where to go, with their relocation plans still left up in the air.

It does not matter that the Israeli government cannot offer more than two
containers to each family to help them remove their possessions.

It does not seem to matter that the experts in Israel's security
establishment are warning that the result of Israel's hasty retreat will be
the creation of a new Islamic terror base.

Sharon is now making it clear that he is under pressure from the U.S.
government, and that its that.

Yet one of the common assumptions over the past two years is that The
Sharon government's plan to expel Jews from Gaza and the Northern Samaria
and unilaterally hand the area over to an independent Palestinian entity
had been an entirely autonomous Israeli decision.

Yet it can now be determined that the US government was behind it all along

In meetings with concerned American citizens, Danny Ayalon, Israeli
ambassador to the U.S, clearly states that Sharon's disengagement plan is
part of an overall Israeli-American agreement.

In late June, Ayalon met with representatives of the Orthodox Union, one of
the largest contingents of United States Orthodox Jews, and told them
clearly that "Prime Minister Sharon is left with no choice. He is doing
exactly what the U.S. expects him to do"

In an interview with the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles published on
June 22nd, 2005, Ayalon reversed earlier Israeli government statements,
saying that Israel does not expect the Palestinian Authority (PA) to
dismantle terrorist infrastructure until after the planned expulsion,
mentioning that e! nding terrorism and anti-Israel incitement had been
conditions Israel had demanded from the PA before carrying out the plan.
However, Ayalon indicated that the agreement with the U.S. was more
important than an agreement with the PA.

Furthermore, the Israeli ambassador asserted that "Disengagement has to be
viewed in the context of Israel-United States relations…"This pullout did
not follow an agreement with the Palestinians, but it followed something
which is much more important, an agreement with the United States.
Disengagement is something that creates a common agenda between us and the
United States."

When asked how much the withdrawal depends on the Arabs, since the Israeli
agreement is with Washington, Ayalon altered previous Israeli government
demands that the PA control terrorism before the pullout.
 
 

This week's sudden announcement of the resignation of Israel Finance
Minister Netanyahu was aimed at the US State Department more than the
Israeli public.

In the final interview given by Netanyahu to the Jerusalem Post on August
5th, 2005, two days before his resignation, he indicated that the current
policy pursued by the government of Israel should be perceived as a threat
to the security interests of the U.S. and of all western countries, since
it creates a terror base in Gaza, since the Palestinian Authority has
incorporated the Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations instead
of dismantling them..

Yet the position of the U.S. State Department remains undaunted: Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon must dismantle and withdraw any and all Israeli
presence from every Jewish community in the Katif district of Gaza by
mid-August.

Sources in the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. government confirm that
the U.S. now urges that Palestinian armed forces be immediately moved into
these Jewish communities in mid-August, as Israel forcibly removes Israeli
Jewish citizens who have lived there for more than thirty years. That could
mean that the Palestinian Authority armed forces will be allowed to pursue
and punish any Jews who cling to their property as the Israeli army is
retreating.

U.S. Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice also demands that Israel find a way
to assure Palestinian Arabs some kind of safe passage that will enable
Palestinian Arab residents of Gaza to traverse Israel in order to reach
their fellow compatriots in the other parts of the Palestinian Arab
self-ruled areas in Judea and Samaria.

Rice is also demanding that Israel allow additional arms and ammunition to
flow to the Palestinian Authority, ignoring the fact that the arms and
ammunition supplied to the PA between 1993 and 2000 were turned against
Israeli citizens since the fall of 2000, with a human toll of 1,073 people
murdered in cold blood by armed Arab terr! orists. And when special U.S.
presidential envoy, General William Ward, was asked two weeks ago by the
U.S. International Relations Committee if the U.S. could account for the
weapons that it had supplied to the Palestinian Authority in the
mid-nineties, Ward's answer was in the negative.

Rice seems to not know or nor care that the Palestinian Authority and its
ruling Fateh organization, remain at war with the state of Israel, with
one purpose in mind: the liberation of Palestine, from the Jordan River
until the Mediterranean Sea.

When Israel Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz objected to Rice's demand for a
safe passage for Palestinian Arab residents from Gaza to the west bank,
sources at the Israel Ministry of Defence confirmed to the media that a
screaming match occurred, with the U.S. Secretary of State clarifying that
she will not accept "no" for an answer in this regard.

Another recently resigned Israel government minister, Natan Scharansky,
confirms that the motivating factor for Sharon's retreat remains the
pressure that he is under from the American government and the other
democracies abroad.

Sharansky wonders why it is that the world's democracies, led by the United
States of America, are so keen to witness the creation of a new
anti-democratic and anti-western and anti-American Islamic state in the
Middle East.

Questions to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv as to why the U.S. State
Department would push Sharon in this direction have remain unanswered.

Israeli government officials do report that they are inundated with calls
ad e-mails from thousands of American Jews and Christians who question the
judgment of Israel's Prime Minister in regards to the inherent dangers of
his disengagement policy.

The time has come to ask the question: Why do U.S. citizens not
challenge the pressures that the U.S. State Department brings against
Israel in this regard?

If the U.S. State Department relents on its pressure against the government
of Israel, Israel will reconsider its plans for a hasty retreat from its
Jewish communities in the Katif district of Gaza.

The ball lies with the citizens and the Congress of the United States of
America.