Excellent case in favour of Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza by Bret Stephens in the Jerusalem Post. Stephens argues not on the basis of the self-destructive utopianism of the left, but from hard-headed pragmatism. Negotiation with the Palestinians is not an option as there is no peaceful partner to negotiate with; staying put in the disputed territories is not an option because demography will soon rob Israel of its democratic character.

Particularly valuable is his answer to what is perhaps the strongest argument against disengagement -- that it might signal weakness to the Arabs and thus provoke yet worse violence:

'Credibility, no less and perhaps more than land, is a strategic asset, and nations that squander it invite catastrophe. This is what Ehud Barak did with his May 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, which not only handed Hizbollah a "victory" they had done nothing to gain militarily but served to inspire the Palestinians to seek a similar result later that year. But it's important to think clearly about where precisely Barak went wrong. Withdrawing from Lebanon was not, in itself, foolish: By 2000, Israel's presence there had become massively unpopular and probably did not justify the drain it imposed on military resources. But withdrawing in the dead of night, abandoning equipment, stranding desperate allies on the far side of the fence, allowing Hizbollah fighters to strut - all this was a fiasco.

'But let's concede for the purposes of this argument that at some point Israel will be pressured into relinquishing control over the Strip's ports of entry and Gaza will become a 60-kilometer long armed camp, all gun sights trained on Israel. That's exactly the situation Israel faces on the border with Lebanon. What keeps Hizbollah from launching its missiles? The answer is, they are deterred by the threat of a conventional military response. Hizbollah may have been a relatively effective guerrilla outfit so long as Israel's presence in southern Lebanon gave it the opportunity to wage guerrilla warfare. But Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon deprived Hizbollah of that option and transformed it into what it is now, a relatively small conventional militia. The same goes for the Palestinian front: Withdrawal would mean Palestinians could no longer wage the terrorist war against Israeli civilians at which they're so expert. If they chose to fight, it would be on terms that overwhelmingly favor Israel. Palestinians, keen calculators of what they can get away with, know this, which partly explains their pronounced ambivalence about disengagement.'

In other words, withdrawal makes military sense. And surely once this is understood in Gaza, it must be applied to the West Bank too. Ehud Olmert, the deputy PM, showed he understood all this when he said a few months ago that Israel had to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank; and it was a fair bet from that point on that Ariel Sharon agreed.

Such is the scale of the irrational hatred in Britain of Sharon, however, that his withdrawal plan has been viewed either as a scam or has even been opposed -- by the very people who scream six times a minute about Israel's 'illegal' occupation. Those of us in favour of withdrawal can disagree -- and no doubt will -- about how much of that territory Israel should ultimately retain. But the fact is Sharon's policy -- to which he appears to intend to stick, despite the ridiculous referendum-that-wasn't -- offers the best chance in decades to break the murderous stalemate in the Middle East.