Doron Rosenblum

But what of the diplomatic process? Surely it is imminent. Sharon smiled and blinked and swayed as he answered a direct question. `The diplomatic process ... ahh ... is actually already well under way ...'

But what of the diplomatic process? Surely it is imminent. Sharon smiled and blinked and swayed as he answered a direct question. `The diplomatic process ... ahh ... is actually already well under way ...'

Political-security-minded Israel wavers between striking a blow and whining, in a kind of perpetual childhood.

This is not just a personal tic: Sharon is the representation and the most authentic embodiment of that primordial and irrepressible urge that has been ticking inside Zionism from its very inception and is still a preoccupation that is unstoppable and insatiable: `Build, build, build, build.'

Ladies and gentlemen: the magician Ariel Sharon, a certified wizard and deceiver. And there is the lady, whom he repeatedly causes to vanish as with a magic wand: the Palestinian entity.

In history, there are periods of twilight whose significance becomes clear only after the fact, for better or for worse. We are in the midst of such a time right at this moment, during the twilight of "the eve of the disengagement."

A Middle Eastern vision? Lofty politics? That's the business of the adults - the Americans, the British, the Europeans, even Abu Mazen. Let all those windbags keep talking, and we will adhere to our petty vision.

If we want to summarize in one word the public atmosphere in present-day Israel - somewhere halfway between the idea of disengagement and its implementation - perhaps we will need the word "frenzy."

The generation after the Six-Day War was no longer exposed to those well-honed "humoresques," but mainly to the tremendous satiric play about the elusiveness of "victory," starring Ephraim Kishon.

If there was any internal logic to Sharon's disengagement plan, in spite of all the questions and doubts, it lies in at least cutting the pedagogical Gordian knot, in a principle similar to that of the withdrawal from Lebanon: to give up trying to educate the Palestinians.

The civil war over the essence of Israel and its definition is long since here. As usual, however, only one side is taking part, with no holds barred - the settlers. The other side is staying home, as is its wont.

There is no end to the diversity and the bizarreness of the arguments and the gimmicks that the settlers are capable of coming up with in the face of every evacuation attempt.

Sharon wasted most of his public life on sabotaging and torpedoing moves, and during his four years as prime minister, he has raised postponement, delay, evasion and foot-dragging to a virtuoso level.

The behavior of the soldiers at checkpoints and military outposts did not erupt on its own from their feverish minds. It grew on a certain soil and due to a certain atmosphere.

Not only did he not shave after Oslo, he never once wore a decent civilian suit. I ask you - this is a serious statesman? Is this a leader who is capable of advancing a constructive civilian-political agenda?

While the Israeli people is interested in living its life in peace and quiet, and plods with dull apathy between its troubles and fears, the Settler people (at least per its leaders) exists in an entirely different 'reality.'

It's as though "the state" has not accumulated anything in all this time, apart from rhetoric: no experience, no practical intelligence, no lessons. The terrorist attacks descend on us with the same chaotic suddenness as the Qassam rockets strike, and they are received with the same surprise.

If the Labor Party were capable of being wily and Machiavellian enough to pay Sharon back properly for his deceptions and to use him as he uses it - that is, to force him not to evade this "disengagement" - it would enter the government.

Strange: Don't any of the leaders of Shinui or 'Labor' - a party fit to explode with ex-generals - have anything critical or any proposal for the area that is the core of our lives here?