If someone tells you something about a third party that may
be loshon hora you should not believe him fully but
you may and even should allow for the possibility that the
information is in fact correct -- lemeichash
mibo'i.
Of course, no one should himself speak loshon hora,
but certainly whatever one speaks should be spoken as truth.
Emes is the seal of Hakodosh Boruch Hu, and our
goal is to approach it. No one thinks that the standard for
deciding what to say is just that there is a chance that it
could be true, that people should just allow for the
possibility that it may be correct, rather than rely on it as
being true.
Except, experience has taught, for Israeli politicians. They
say whatever is convenient today, and tomorrow is another
day. One of the most typical was Yitzhak Shamir. When his
coalition partners asked him to keep his promises, he calmly
told them nothing doing. "I may have promised," he explained,
"but I did not promise to keep my promise."
As Prime Minister Sharon said soon after taking office, "What
one sees from here, one does not see from there." If Sharon
was once known as a straight-talking person but a brilliant
tactician who was consistent and reliable, once he got into
the prime minister's office he seems to have seen things more
like his predecessors there. He is still a brilliant
tactician, but the rest has been discarded.
His unilateral disengagement plan is the talk of the Middle
East. He announced that the plan would move 17 settlements in
the Gaza Strip away from among the hostile Arab
population.
The plan certainly stirred up an enormous amount of
commentary. However that seems to have been its most concrete
element so far. Sharon did not actually specify even one
settlement that he would dismantle, and he certainly did not
at any point say when he would do so. No doubt Sharon
remembers well that a full four years passed between the
signing of the peace treaty with Egypt and the withdrawal
from Yamit. The chances that anything will happen while
Sharon is prime minister are not high.
It is not a simple step to move 7,500 people, some of whom
have lived there for more than 30 years. You have to pass a
specific plan in the Cabinet. It will probably require
Knesset legislation at some point. You have to talk with the
settlers. You have to find places for them to move. You have
to plan and organize the physical move.
The parties of the Right have not left the government. Even
though they are obviously extremely eager to remain,
uprooting settlements is beyond what they can tolerate, even
to retain their Cabinet seats. Nonetheless, they have not
budged and the obvious implication is they do not expect
anything to happen on the ground.
The clear purpose of the announcement was to restore the
initiative to Sharon (a classical battlefield goal) and to
throw all his opponents off balance. The move also realigns
Sharon with Bush, and makes Sharon's plan the issue rather
than the Road Map. Even though the Left is as skeptical of
Sharon's true intentions as the Right, it is clearly a step
in their direction and they have been forced to assent to the
substance of the plan, even though they would prefer to
oppose Sharon rather than support their principles.
In short, it does not seem like Sharon's unilateral
disengagement approach will cause too many changes on the
ground. Its sphere of operation is primarily politics and
diplomacy rather than physical reality. Since its only
standard seems to have been to propose something that people
could not say is ridiculous but have to allow for its
possibility, we can say with confidence, `Don't count on
it.'
