from Unity Coalition for Israel: "Israel Resource News Agency - Aug 08, 2005 By David Bedein, Bureau Chief --- (emphasis added)...
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, including 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'.
...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...
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 ending 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.
...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.
...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 terrorists.
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.
...Another recently resigned Israel government minister, Natan Sharansky, 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.
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