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This link to a color coded map depicts the second withdrawal map that was approved by the government of Israel on February 20, 2005, as the second scheduled Israeli withdrawal, following the pullback and expulsions of the Katif Jewish communities from Gaza which occurred during the summer of 2005.
U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Secretary Condoleeza Rice, in their last months in power, have placed their prestige on the land and demanded that Israel implement this withdrawal, to make way for a sovereign Palestinian nation state.
The question asked in this Jewish New Year is whether Israel will implement this map.
However, the condition for any withdrawal, according to Israeli law, is that no area can be handed over for the use of terrorists, which is precisely what happened in Gaza.
The government of Israel, in its June 6th, 2004 ratification the Disengagement Law, enacted the provision which forbids the government of Israel from handing over any confiscated Jewish assets to terrorists.
That provision, in clause seven, declared that Israel will transfer “facilities, including industrial, commercial and agricultural ones, to a third, international party which will put them to use for the benefit of the Palestinian population that is not involved in terror.. “.
Despite that Israeli government decision, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon defied the law of his own government and transferred confiscated Jewish assets to the World Bank, and then to the Palestinians, in an arrangement that eliminated the words, “not involved in terror.”
Indeed, in the 23 June 2004 monograph signed by then-World Bank president James Wolfensohn and presented to Israel and the PLO entitled “Disengagement, Palestinian Economy and the Settlements,” all confiscated settlement assets were to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, without any prerequisite that those who receive the assets have not been involved in terrorism.
The words, “not involved in terror”, simply did not appear.
On August 14th, 2005, the day before Israel’s withdrawal was about to commence, an investigation conducted by the Jerusalem Post indicated that the Palestinian Authority had invited armed terror militias from Lebanon to take up position in the abandoned settlements that Israel is about to cede.
Indeed, over the past three years. the Palestinian regime in Gaza used these newly acquired strategic assets to mount a new war of missile terror attacks against southern Israel
All this, despite the fact that no Israeli government decision was ever taken to hand over confiscated assets of Jews to their murderers.
Precisely the opposite was the case.
The policy of the government of Israel to hand over vital assets to terrorists represented a gross violation of a policy decision taken by the democratically elected government of Israel.
Now the Israeli government seems intend to repeat that violation, and to sell it to the world as the implementation of a policy that was enacted by a democratically elected government of Israel.
The implementation of this map would mean that Israel will expel the 80,000 Jews from their homes in Hebron, Tekoa, Nokdim, Ofra, Beit El, the entire Jordan Valley and more, while placing the Ben Gurion Airport, Jerusalem and, the entire Tel Aviv/Netanya region will be within rocket range of strategically placed missiles
Yet the Bush Administration, in its waning days, has informed the Israeli government that it expects Israel to implement the second stage by the end of the calendar year.
How Israel will cope with this Bush directive remains the challenge of the Jewish new year, which commences this week.
