Peres Admits He Was Wrong About The Disengagment...Sort of

Interesting timing:

President Shimon Peres said Wednesday that he had erred in supporting Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.

The revealing remarks come three years after Israel's evacuation of the volatile coastal strip which has since been seized by Hamas.

"Whatever will happen in the future, we shall not repeat the mistakes we made in leaving Gaza," Peres said in a question and answer session with a group of American Jewish leaders. "It should have been done otherwise. I was for leaving Gaza. I consider myself as one of the persons mistaken."

At the same time though, Peres has not completely retreated from the idea:

The dovish leader, who has long been a champion of Israeli territorial withdrawals, said that although "lessons must be drawn" from the 2005 unilateral Gaza pullout, demographic and democratic considerations still necessitate the creation of a Palestinian state.

"It doesn't change the fact that there is a [demographic] reality," he told the annual Israel meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "I want to make sure that the state we have remains Jewish."[emphasis added]

In light of this seeming contradiction, David Hazony's post on the Peres comment is instructive:

Of course, this can be read in more than one way. Aside from the objection from the Right, that disengagement would embolden Israel’s enemies and lead to a much worse conflict, there was also an objection from the Left: that Israel should be reaching negotiated settlements rather than taking unilateral actions. Peres’s ambiguous words let him hint in both directions at once. Peres is a master at this sort of thing.

Also, Peres' demographic reality comment is debatable, based on the miscalculation of the Israeli Arab population and the statistics on Palestinian Arab emigration.

More interesting is the timing for his comment. Hazony notes:

We are just days before Peres has to choose between giving the reins of coalition-forming, and probably government itself, either to Kadima or to Likud. It will be recalled that the whole reason that Kadima exists was that Ariel Sharon failed to get support for disengagement from within his own party, so he broke away to form Kadima, got Peres to come on board, and on this basis went ahead with disengagement anyway. In other words: Peres has chosen this particular moment to distance himself forcefully from the party with the most seats in the Knesset, the party that he himself helped create.

In still other words: It looks like he’s preparing his old friends in Kadima for the disappointment that his next move will bring. [emphasis added]

Talk about disengagement!

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Peres and Israeli Elections.