Strife Within Likud

[Scurrilous]

http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/02-2004/Article-20040201-7232fbe2-c0a8-01ed-001c-22ffce15730a/story.html

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"In early 1980 a military helicopter hovered over the settlement of Netzarim. In it sat the then Minister of, Sharon and the military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev. Segev told Sharon, his former commander in the Paratroopers Corps, that he was deeply worried. "I have to defend a sort of concentration camp, surrounded by yet another concentration camp, the Nusseirat refugee camp. This is almost mission impossible. What's the point?"

Sharon retorted with no hesitation: "I want that every night the Arabs will see Jewish lights at a distance of 500 meters."

This episode illuminates the Sharon settlement strategy. Not paving the way for messianic redemption by seizing parts of Eretz Israel, as Gush Emounim, who had pioneered the settlements (in 1968) would have it; nether taking over at least one of the two banks of the Jordan river, as the nostalgics of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's movement (by then headed by Menachem Begin) claim.

It was not even pure military considerations (regarding commanding hills or sensitive crossroads, for instance) that motivated Sharon. It was plainly the desire to create a "demonstration effect," to show who's boss, the master of the territory."