I RETURNED FROM A TRIP to Israel last week, at the beginning of what promises to be one of the most wrenching seasons in the country’s history. The “disengagement” (the tolerable if imprecise and probably misleading term used to describe the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip, now scheduled for August) is what will make this summer wrenching; what might happen as a result of it is what might make this summer violent, tragic or historic (in a terrible way).
The support of, and perhaps demand for, the disengagement from Gaza by the United States is a key reason for it–but disengagement is not happening because President Bush told Prime Minister Sharon to do it. Its roots are in the political consensus that has developed in Israel over the past two years, probably shared by 75 percent of the Jewish population.
