Avi Dichter, former head of Israel’s security service Shin Bet, has delivered a far more upbeat — if still sobering — assessment of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza than the apocalyptic prediction by the former chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon of a third terror war, and the widespread view among hawks that the withdrawal will be seen by the Arabs as a fatal sign of weakness. As Ha’aretz reported:

‘The disengagement is not tantamount to running away, as he sees it, "Even though there won't be a single Palestinian who will not present it as though they expelled us from Gaza the way Hezbollah expelled us from Lebanon. But we know the truth about how the tahadiyeh [a lull in violence] was achieved. In Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], their infrastructures have been hit in a very significant way. Hamas-Samaria hasn't produced a major terror attack since September 2003. [Islamic] Jihad has also been through a difficult period. In Gaza, a real limit has been put in place on their freedom of movement. For Muhammad Def, to be a wanted man is one thing. But for people like Mahmoud al-Zahar [political leader of Hamas] it is a completely different story. They saw that when they fired a Qassam, we came in as far as Jabalya. They realized that this format would arouse the population against them and at their own initiative they informed the Palestinian Authority of the tahadiyeh." Purely from the security point of view, he says, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is no different from the withdrawal from southern Lebanon. "The threat of the Qassams doesn't change between the current situation and the situation after the disengagement. On the contrary. Today, when you go into Beit Hanun to deal with a Qassam, you get mortars in Gush Katif. After the withdrawal, the `carpet of targets' that will be at the Palestinians' disposal will shrink drastically. It will be easier to work against the Qassams after the withdrawal, when we aren't endangering the inhabitants of the Gush." '

Clearly, with such a mammoth and dangerous undertaking there are bound to be conflicting views among military and intelligence top brass. And the imponderables — such as the scale of settler resistance —are legion. But for my money. Dichter’s analysis is credible. He is more controversial, however, when he talks about what is in his view the really dangerous territory — the West Bank, where he reveals real differences of opinion with the Israeli army:

‘The army is also talking about a disengagement from the territory, not only from the four Jewish settlements. As the Shin Bet sees it, this is an unreasonable risk in today's conditions. If we don't act in the Jenin area, a vacuum will be created there and chances are that the terror organizations will come in and not the PA security apparatus. As far as the terror organizations are concerned, the combination of the information that will be flowing from the Gaza Strip and the possibilities inherent in the West Bank are everything they could desire. We have to be cautious about doing anything hasty in the West Bank." '

Of course, to the British and Europeans — and maybe, given how flaky the Bush administration has become, to the US too — any such Israeli consolidation in the West Bank will be seen not for what it is, a strategic defence move, but an act of needless provocation and aggression.