When Things Fall Apart

Iraq is a mess. Iran and N. Korea are thumbing their noses at us, Russia is on its way back to being a dictatorship and now Israel is trashing the road map to peace.

"The Israeli government does not intend to honour the US-backed road map to peace in the Middle East once it has completed a planned pullout from Gaza, an Israeli newspaper reported today.

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, told the Yediot Ahronot daily that there might not be any troop pullbacks after Israel had carried out its so-called unilateral 'disengagement' from the Palestinians - withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements - in 2005.

'It is very possible that, after the evacuation, there will be a long period when nothing else happens,' Mr Sharon said. He told the paper it was impossible to say whether this could signal decades of stalemate.
Mr Sharon said that, as long as there was no significant shift in the Palestinian leadership and policy, Israel would 'continue its war on terrorism, and will stay in the territories [of the West Bank] that will remain after the implementation of disengagement'. "