Columnist Klutzky or, Bovine Feces

Yoel Marcus is thought of as one of Israel's more senior - and therefore most influential - columnists. But not necessarily the smartest.

It was to him that Sharon gave his now famous interview basically announcing the plans for a disengagement (*see timeline below) from Gaza.

So, despite support for the current operation, he still ends up writing:

However Operation Cast Lead ends, the important side lesson we can learn from it is that territory is becoming less and less central to an agreement. Nowadays, when missiles can reach the same target from north or south or dozens of kilometers away, it is not as risky to give up some hill or other because it is close to the airport, for example.

The whole territorial business has lost its importance. More and more, holding on to territories and their impact on a political agreement is becoming a thing of the past. A kilometer here, a kilometer there. All of a sudden, it's passe - a relic from another era in missile history.

Remember the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?" Try "Honey, I Shrunk the Country" on for size.

This, of course, is unmitigated bovine feces, as my friend Dr. Amiel Unger once said of a Kissinger suggestion way back during the post-Yom Kippur negotiations.

I wonder what residents of Ashdod feel and those of Beer Sheva knowing that Marcus thinks that just a few kilometers is, well, nothing. After all, let Ashkelon and Ofakim residents go to hell is his implication.

This is twisted thinking, thinking so representative of Haaretz and a select media elite which supports politically the worse policies for our country. He is promoting Barak and he will fit Barak's thinking (he wrote in that article this about Barak: "Ordering this operation, the brainchild of Ehud Barak, was a stroke of brilliance"; "Barak, whatever the circuitous workings of his brilliant mind") into a framework which is wrong but just palpable enough to be spoonfed to weak minds.

If anything like the Gaza disengagement happens to Judea & Samaria, YESHA, you can forget about using Ben-Gurion Airport, Mr. Marcus.

Of course, you can always apologize later, if you are alive.

Here's what Marcus later wrote:

To my great sorrow, it now seems that the extremist and pessimistic settlers were those who were right. The Palestinians do not wish to recognize Israel and have not accepted its existence. And now, with the election of Hamas, they again are not missing any opportunity to miss an opportunity…They turned the communities of Gush Katif into launch sites against residents of the Negev and particularly the town of Sderot. The warnings of Ariel Sharon and Dan Halutz that ‘If they will fire Kassams after Gaza is evacuated, Israel’s response will be harsh’ has not really frightened them. -Haaretz, November 21, 2006

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Disengagement timeline

November 13, 2003
­Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, close confidant of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, tells Haaretz in an interview that "the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve. This issue above all others will dictate the solution that we must adopt. In the absence of a negotiated agreement... we need to implement a unilateral alternative."

December 16, 2003
At the Herzliya Conference, Sharon announces his "disengagement plan," which he says will include "the redeployment of IDF forces along new security lines and a change in the deployment of settlements ... In the framework of a future agreement, Israel will not remain in all the places where it is today."

February 3, 2004 ­
In an interview with Haaretz commentator Yoel Marcus, Sharon says he plans to remove all settlements in the Gaza Strip and three in the northern West Bank.

March 28, 2004 ­
Knesset votes down bill on holding a national referendum on the disengagement plan.

April 14, 2004 ­
President George W. Bush and Sharon exchange letters. In his letter, Bush recognizes the "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers ... It is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Sharon sees this as U.S. recognition of his demand to hold onto major settlement blocks in the West Bank in any final status agreement.

May 2, 2004 ­
Despite leading in the opinion polls weeks before the Likud referendum on the disengagement, Sharon is humiliated when party members vote against his plan by 60 to 40 percent. He declares he will forge ahead with the pullout.

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