Former prime minister Ariel Sharon led Israel into two giant experiments. Most regrettably, both of them were colossal failures. Nevertheless, his successors are currently playing around with the idea of returning to his failed experiments, with the near-messianic expectation that this time they will succeed. The Big Pines campaign of the summer of 1982 was aimed at making Bashir Gemayel the ruler of Lebanon so he would sign a peace agreement with Israel and ensure the security of the northern communities. The results are known: Gemayel was elected president, but he was assassinated before he managed to be sworn in. Sharon's plan collapsed like a house of cards. Bashir's brother Amin Gemayel ignored all the understandings between the two sides. And today, after years of wars that have exacted hundreds of dead, the peace of Kiryat Shmona depends to a large extent on the mood of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

In the summer of 2005, Ariel Sharon carried out his second large experiment: the forced evacuation of thousands of Israelis from their homes and the transfer of the Gaza region to the Palestinians. For the first time a Palestinian state was established on contiguous territory, clear of any Jewish presence. Just a few months after the withdrawal and establishment of the de facto state, the Palestinians elected Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister. Hamas later took over the administrative and military mechanisms in the Gaza Strip by force. An Al-Qaida-Hezbollah-Hamas state is currently located on the Israeli border and is supported by Iran. It is raining rockets on the South each day. The diplomatic plans gathering steam these days in the offices of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Vice Premier Haim Ramon are an exact reprise of Sharon's dud operations. The plans aim to establish a "clean" Palestinian state on contiguous territory that covers nearly all of Judea and Samaria - the West Bank - just like Gaza. To prevent, supposedly, the severe damage that has been brought on us by the Gaza state, Israel will ensure the rule of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whether or not this is what the Palestinians want, just as in Lebanon.

Abbas (Abu Mazen) is the man who wrote a doctorate on "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement." He was involved up to his neck in the murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich and has promised the refugees in Lebanon that they will return to their homes in Israel proper.

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An Israeli withdrawal from most of the territories of Judea and Samaria and the establishment of a Palestinian state there will inevitably lead to the same disastrous results of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. In the absence of Israeli settlements and the Israel Defense Forces' control of the territory, a Hamas takeover is only a matter of time. The notion that Gaza is a Hamas state whereas the West Bank is not entirely contradicts the facts. In the last regional elections to the Palestinian parliament, Hamas won 30 seats in Judea and Samaria, while Fatah won only 12. In Hebron, for example, Hamas won all nine seats.

So it is clear that without Israeli intervention, the days of Abbas and his colleagues are numbered. To prevent a Hamas takeover of a future Palestinian state, Israel will have to base its control on what the left in its wickedness likes to call "IDF spears." However, the IDF will not be there. Maintaining Abbas, without an Israeli presence on the ground, is an impossible mission. Sooner or later Abbas' fate will be like Gemayel's.

Vice Premier Ramon has understood these problems and recently suggested that in the absence of the IDF, forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will keep Abbas in power. A proposal like this might have sounded convincing in the era before the Gulf War. Although a coalition of NATO member states succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq, are the coalition and its leaders also succeeding in navigating the violent events there? Of course not. And in Judea and Samaria the foreign forces' motivation will be even lower, as this will not be a U.S. president's "flagship war."

But we have already carried out this experiment as well, and it failed miserably. A multinational force from three senior NATO members landed in Beirut in August 1982. Fourteen months later the force suffered 299 dead in the truck bombings in the Lebanese capital. Another five months elapsed and the last soldier left Lebanon shamefacedly.

After the Lebanon and Gaza experiments, it is perfectly clear that a withdrawal from the territories of Judea and Samaria in the hope that a sympathetic president will rule is a suicidal delusion. If, heaven forbid, this is done, Sderot's role will be played by Kfar Sava and Afula, and instead of the strategic installation south of Ashkelon (which the censor does not allow to be named), the planes taking off from Ben-Gurion International Airport will be bombarded. The result of the experiment will not change.

Danny Dayan is chairman of the Yesha Council.