...Today the Bush Administration, together with the Sharon-Peres government, is pushing the view that Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan for Gaza and northern Samaria is aligned with the Bush Doctrine. Among the Palestinians and the Israelis, however, it is becoming increasingly clear with each passing day that not only is there no connection between the two, but that there is a glaring contradiction.

This week, MK Azmi Bishara's Web site, www.Arabs1948.com, published an interview with Hamas spokesman Ahmed al-Bahar in which he discussed the significance of Sharon's plan. Bahar claimed, "The painful and qualitative blows which the Palestinian resistance dealt to the Jews and their soldiers over the past four and a half years led to the decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip."

"All indications show that since its establishment, Israel has never been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today, following more than four years of the intifada," he continued. "Hamas's heroic attacks exposed the weakness and volatility of the impotent Zionist security establishment. The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state. We believe that the resistance is the only way to pressure the Jews."

There can be no clearer exposition of the Palestinian view that Israel's plan to hand over strategic assets to its enemy in the midst of war and receive nothing in return is a victory for terror than Bahar's statement...