Ariel sharon's chief adviser, Dov Weisglass, has admitted publicly that the Israeli prime minister formulated his plan for "unilateral withdrawal" in order to block peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and thus keep the majority of Jewish settlers in the West Bank-and that he did so with the full backing of the Bush administration.

Dov Weisglass should know. He is one of the architects of Sharon's plan and heads Israel's negotiations with the White House. He told Ha'aretz Friday Magazine in an interview that has been published in part, "The significance of the plan is the freezing of the peace process.

"It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." Weisglass explains that the disengagement plan developed by Sharon was a response to what Israel viewed as growing opposition internationally-and, even more importantly, domestically-to Sharon's bloody offensive against the Palestinians, and a desire for some form of negotiated settlement.

When asked why the disengagement plan had been developed, he replied, "Because in the fall of 2003 we understood that everything was stuck. And although by the way the Americans read the situation, the blame fell on the Palestinians, not on us, Arik [Sharon] grasped that this state of affairs could not last, that they wouldn't leave us alone, wouldn't get off our case.

Time was not on our side. There was international erosion, internal erosion. Domestically, in the meantime, everything was collapsing. The economy was stagnant, and the Geneva Initiative had gained broad support.

"And then we were hit with the letters of officers and letters of pilots and letters of commandos (refusing to serve in the territories). These were not weird kids with green ponytails and a ring in their nose with a strong odour of grass. These were people like Spector's group (Yiftah Spector, a renowned Air Force pilot who signed the pilots' letter). Really our finest young people."

Sharon responded by declaring that, as Israel had already proclaimed that PA leader Yasser Arafat was no longer considered to be a "partner for peace," supposedly because of his failure to stop terrorist attacks on Israel (a position fully endorsed by Washington), he would now proceed with a plan for "unilateral separation."

In practice this amounted to a crude land-grab of the bulk of the West Bank. This was barely masked by a military withdrawal and the removal of around 7,500 Zionist settlers from the Gaza Strip, as well as just four settlements on the West Bank.

Gaza will remain under Israeli military encirclement, while the best West Bank land, and the whole of East Jerusalem, will be permanently annexed to Israel behind a heavily fortified border wall.

Weisglass makes clear that the sacrifice of some settlements was conceived of as a way of ending the pretence of seeking a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians under the US- sponsored "Roadmap" in a "legitimate manner."

"That is exactly what happened. You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen."

He admitted that, far from this move flying in the face of an American initiative for peace, it was carried out with Washington's backing. -Courtesy: World Socialist Website.