Ofer Shelach, together with fellow left-wing journalist and commentator Raviv Drucker, has just published Boomerang, an insider's narrative of the backroom goings-on that led to a prime minister defying the platform upon which he was elected and his determined pushing through of a political plan despite its overwhelming rejection by the members of his own Likud party.
Shelach (pronounced with a guttural "kh") spoke with Israel National Radio's Eli Stutz on Monday about why he wrote the book, how he obtained the information for it, and why decided to publish it on the eve of implementation of the Disengagement Plan.
"Why now?" Shelach was asked, with the implication being that the revelations on the reasoning for the expulsion plan could have made a difference had they been publicized earlier.
"It is simple," he responded. "We have been working for three years on a book that covers the whole of the Intifada - all the fighting that has been going on for almost five years. The chapters on disengagement are only three chapters out of 28 in the whole book. Of course, because disengagement is very much in the news right now, those passages from the book [dealing with it] were taken out and presented, but that was not the purpose or goal of the book. We just completed it now."
The authors did not intend for the book to be an expose of the scandalous roots of the Disengagement Plan. Shelach says that the book was intended to demonstrate to the Israeli people that the government had several windows of opportunity in which it could have ended the Arab terror offensive and failed to do so due to the flawed nature of the government. "What we did in the book is this: We present about five or six possible turning points since September 2000, the way the fighting was presented to the Israeli people, the way various powers-that-were acted and the decisions they took at several key points along the way."
"For example," said Shelach, "after 9/11, once the effect of 9/11 was fully understood by Arafat, he told his people to stop the violence. The tide began to turn, but then certain events happened, culminating in the targeted killing of a terrorist leader in the West Bank that prevented the tide from turning. I want to be clear about this. We are not blaming the Israelis for what happened. The Palestinians are also to blame - maybe more to blame, but this book aimed to examine the way the Israeli leadership works - the way the military works vis-a-vis the political leadership and vice versa."
"If you asked Ariel Sharon in 2001, if four years later he would lead Israel to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, build a fence that precludes 94% of the West Bank and watch almost helplessly as Hamas becomes the leading force in Palestinian society - all the while calling this a victory - he would have looked at you like you were crazy," Shelach said.
The veteran journalist says that the material on Sharon's involvement in the Greek Island scandal and its connection with his decision to withdraw became available only recently. "In the last couple of months, a lot of things started to come out of the woodwork," he said. "Maybe it is because disengagement is just around the corner, maybe it is because people are less busy now protecting their own skin and are realizing that there is going to be historical judgement on this."
What he found over the past months of speaking to the people close to Sharon was repeated stories of the tight-knit "Farm Forum" - consisting of the Sharon family and their confidantes - making critical decision without any regard for government procedure, and behind the backs of the military. "A lot of things are starting to come out showing the whole confused, disorderly process culminating in the disengagement plan," Shelach said. "For example, the whole military was purposely cut off from the entire process of planning the Disengagement Plan. It was led by Sharon and his close unelected circle. By law, in Israel, the Commander in Chief of the army is not just the prime minister, but rather the entire government. But [in fact] the government - and some of the ministers quite willingly - was not a part of the disengagement decision making process."
"What we are saying is that Sharon was at a dead end by the end of 2003. After the fall of Abu Mazen as Palestinian prime minister [under Arafat], it was obvious that the whole idea of imposing someone on Arafat was ridiculous - that it wouldn't work. You have to remember who Ariel Sharon is. In his own mind, he is the person whose life's mission is to protect Israelis and Jews in general and there he was, the prime minister in whose term more Israelis lost their lives in terrorist actions than under any other prime minister. There he was without a plan, and there he was with his legal troubles. And then his close allies, led by Dov Weisglas, told him, 'You have got to do something big or else you will go down in history as a failing prime minister. You have to do something big to give hope to the public.'"
"Nobody says this [outright], but we heard from people very close in the inner circle that behind all this, of course, was, 'If you don't do this you will also go down because of your legal troubles.' We don't have a smoking gun on this. There is no smoking gun or paper in which Sharon or somebody wrote down, 'You have to do this or you are going to be indicted' - but it is part of a whole story. We are talking about people getting together and saying things like 'This week a new attorney general is coming into office, we have got to do something big.' "
Shelach says he hopes people will read what he has written and judge for themselves whether it affects the way they view the Disengagement Plan. "We are showing people how these things came about," he said. "It is up to people to judge whether this was right or wrong."
Click here to listen to the complete interview on Israel National Radio
Shelach (pronounced with a guttural "kh") spoke with Israel National Radio's Eli Stutz on Monday about why he wrote the book, how he obtained the information for it, and why decided to publish it on the eve of implementation of the Disengagement Plan.
"Why now?" Shelach was asked, with the implication being that the revelations on the reasoning for the expulsion plan could have made a difference had they been publicized earlier.
"It is simple," he responded. "We have been working for three years on a book that covers the whole of the Intifada - all the fighting that has been going on for almost five years. The chapters on disengagement are only three chapters out of 28 in the whole book. Of course, because disengagement is very much in the news right now, those passages from the book [dealing with it] were taken out and presented, but that was not the purpose or goal of the book. We just completed it now."
The authors did not intend for the book to be an expose of the scandalous roots of the Disengagement Plan. Shelach says that the book was intended to demonstrate to the Israeli people that the government had several windows of opportunity in which it could have ended the Arab terror offensive and failed to do so due to the flawed nature of the government. "What we did in the book is this: We present about five or six possible turning points since September 2000, the way the fighting was presented to the Israeli people, the way various powers-that-were acted and the decisions they took at several key points along the way."
"For example," said Shelach, "after 9/11, once the effect of 9/11 was fully understood by Arafat, he told his people to stop the violence. The tide began to turn, but then certain events happened, culminating in the targeted killing of a terrorist leader in the West Bank that prevented the tide from turning. I want to be clear about this. We are not blaming the Israelis for what happened. The Palestinians are also to blame - maybe more to blame, but this book aimed to examine the way the Israeli leadership works - the way the military works vis-a-vis the political leadership and vice versa."
"If you asked Ariel Sharon in 2001, if four years later he would lead Israel to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, build a fence that precludes 94% of the West Bank and watch almost helplessly as Hamas becomes the leading force in Palestinian society - all the while calling this a victory - he would have looked at you like you were crazy," Shelach said.
The veteran journalist says that the material on Sharon's involvement in the Greek Island scandal and its connection with his decision to withdraw became available only recently. "In the last couple of months, a lot of things started to come out of the woodwork," he said. "Maybe it is because disengagement is just around the corner, maybe it is because people are less busy now protecting their own skin and are realizing that there is going to be historical judgement on this."
What he found over the past months of speaking to the people close to Sharon was repeated stories of the tight-knit "Farm Forum" - consisting of the Sharon family and their confidantes - making critical decision without any regard for government procedure, and behind the backs of the military. "A lot of things are starting to come out showing the whole confused, disorderly process culminating in the disengagement plan," Shelach said. "For example, the whole military was purposely cut off from the entire process of planning the Disengagement Plan. It was led by Sharon and his close unelected circle. By law, in Israel, the Commander in Chief of the army is not just the prime minister, but rather the entire government. But [in fact] the government - and some of the ministers quite willingly - was not a part of the disengagement decision making process."
"What we are saying is that Sharon was at a dead end by the end of 2003. After the fall of Abu Mazen as Palestinian prime minister [under Arafat], it was obvious that the whole idea of imposing someone on Arafat was ridiculous - that it wouldn't work. You have to remember who Ariel Sharon is. In his own mind, he is the person whose life's mission is to protect Israelis and Jews in general and there he was, the prime minister in whose term more Israelis lost their lives in terrorist actions than under any other prime minister. There he was without a plan, and there he was with his legal troubles. And then his close allies, led by Dov Weisglas, told him, 'You have got to do something big or else you will go down in history as a failing prime minister. You have to do something big to give hope to the public.'"
"Nobody says this [outright], but we heard from people very close in the inner circle that behind all this, of course, was, 'If you don't do this you will also go down because of your legal troubles.' We don't have a smoking gun on this. There is no smoking gun or paper in which Sharon or somebody wrote down, 'You have to do this or you are going to be indicted' - but it is part of a whole story. We are talking about people getting together and saying things like 'This week a new attorney general is coming into office, we have got to do something big.' "
Shelach says he hopes people will read what he has written and judge for themselves whether it affects the way they view the Disengagement Plan. "We are showing people how these things came about," he said. "It is up to people to judge whether this was right or wrong."
Click here to listen to the complete interview on Israel National Radio