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Sharon may just be bluffing. I have thought a lot about this, and the truth is that neither the US, Egypt or Jordan or even the UN want an Israeli pullout. By announcing the pullout Sharon is forcing these countries to go as far as coming out IN FAVOR of Israeli occupation and, by inference, settlement!

Even if these countries don't go that far, they will still be forced to change their tune quite a bit. This will alleviate the international pressure on Israel, and also cause the media to turn the heat down quite a bit, since it will have become obvious that after all these years of haranguing Israel to withdraw from "arab land", nobody really wants them to.

And the reason they don't want them to is manyfold, but Egypt and Jordan don't want the security problem, and the immigration problem, and/or the exodus problem if/when the Palestinian civil war starts. The USA doesn't want to have to deal with the financial/social/military problems involving a decrepit "Palestine" or a "sharia Palestine" in the absense of Israeli oversight, in the middle of a civil war. The UN doesn't want Israel to leave them with the mess.

Hey, monkeyshine. I don't think so, about Sharon. Why would he want to tick off the rest of the right? It is the leftist Rabin nuts in Israel that want this. You know all the secular liberals in Tel Aviv can't stand the dati "settlers" in Gush Katif, etc. It seems that once again, the Israeli government is Israel's worst enemy with regard to politics.