If there aren't any stunning surprises, U.S. President George W. Bush's blessings for the disengagement plan will, in the blink of an eye, become the kiss of death for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government.
This time, he will not have suspenders at his disposal in the form of the "seven days of quiet" that served as charm against the dear departed Tenet plan, or in the form of the 14 qualifications that chained the dying road map. After the plan earns American trust, it will be impossible to treat it like the Mitchell plan of blessed memory, which was ostensibly adopted but never won the trust of the government of Israel. The government ministers from the National Union will not be able to represent a government that has voted in favor of evacuating the Jewish settlements from Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. The rabbis of the National Religious Party will not allow the party's wheeler-dealers to serve in a government that has decided to hand over "parts of the land of Israel" to gentiles.
The behavior of the Jewish settlers' lobby is reminiscent of a child who acts wild in class and keeps misbehaving despite all the punishments. During a period of less than 10 years, they have brought about the fall of four prime ministers who dared to try their hand at nonbrutal solutions. During that period, the political configuration allowed them to add new Jewish settlements in the territories but the political and the international reality slapped them in the face again and again. Only three years ago just a small portion of the things Sharon said in his Herzliya speech would have been enough to send both him and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out to the balcony in Zion Square in order to attack the speaker. For more moderate heresies than these, Tzachi Hanegbi (now public security minister) unplugged microphones.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/402106.html