Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was scheduled to make a speech yesterday, and it would seem that all of Israel, certainly all of the Israeli press, was speculating about what he would say.
The truth is that Sharon may end up saying very little that he has not said before, particularly on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, merely reiterating his known position: that Israel is wait-ing for some concrete steps from the Palestinian side in fighting terrorism before returning to the negotiating table to try to implement the road map, the American and European-supported plan for peace.
But Sharon is speaking at a time of especially lively debate among Israelis where some new initiative or proposal seems almost a daily occurrence, and Sharon surely knows that the public will be disappointed if he does not announce at least some modest new measures, most likely, according to local press reports, plans for a limited withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the occupied territories even in the absence of an agreement with the Palestinians.
Sharon was scheduled to speak at a dinner meeting last night in the seaside town of Herzliya, where an Israeli and international who's who has been gathered for much of this week for the fourth annual conference of the Israeli Institute for Policy and Strategy.
"Even a limited evacuation of settlements, or other significant immediate measures, would prove to both the Israeli public and the international community that Sharon is capable of initiating rather than merely responding," a foreign policy commentator, Aluf Benn, wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz on Wednesday.
Many people here are expecting Sharon to outline one of two broad options.
One would be to announce a concrete and specific withdrawal of all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and some relatively remote settlements on the West Bank. This would be the bold option, as analysts here have it, but only if Sharon announces a definite timetable for the withdrawal.
A more cautious, and perhaps more likely, approach would be for Sharon to announce in principle a readiness to withdraw some settlements, but to present it only as a possibility if the road map is declared dead several months from now, as many here expect it will be.
Pressure to announce some sort of new departure seems to be mounting from several different directions both in Israel and abroad.
One is intense international attention and discussion aroused by the Geneva peace initiative, announced in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago by a pair of former Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators and praised by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others.
In addition, Israelis, including both members of Sharon's own government and several former heads of the Israeli intelligence agency, have been publicly saying that the government's reliance almost entirely on military action in the face of terrorist attacks is not only failing to ensure Israeli security, it is perversely intensifying anti-Israeli feelings among Palestinians and thus potentially creating conditions for even more terrorism.
This has led to a widespread discussion about a redeployment of Israeli forces both in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank, a measure that would amount to an effective withdrawal from some areas under Israeli control.
"The serious situation the Palestinian people are confronted with does not work in our favor, but instead serves Arafat's interest," The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday quoted an unidentified senior Israel Defense Force officer as saying.
Another development is disappointment in Israel with the recently installed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qureia, who is seen as both weak and subservient to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom Sharon's government has rejected as a negotiating partner.
The senior Israel Defense Force officer told The Jerusalem Post that Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, "is a straw man, Arafat's mask," a view that is clearly shared at high levels of Sharon's government.
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