Ha’aretz Magazine, 8 October 2004 - Dov Weisglass, counsel to Ariel Sharon in an interview with Ari Shavit.
I still don’t see how the disengagement plan helps here. What was the major importance of the plan from your point of view?
“The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president’s formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

So you have carried out the maneuver of the century? And all of it with authority and permission?
“When you say ‘maneuver,’ it doesn’t sound nice. It sounds like you said one thing and something else came out. But that’s the whole point. After all, what have I been shouting for the past year? That I found a device, in cooperation with the management of the world, to ensure that there will be no stopwatch here. That there will be no timetable to implement the settlers’ nightmare. I have postponed that nightmare indefinitely. Because what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did. The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

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My article plainly didn’t minimise the effect of rocket attacks on a civilian population - in fact I explicitly noted that efforts to minimise the attacks as ‘nagging’ were wrong. I simply pointed out the paradox of portraying a six year campaign as an existential threat, and thus legitimating any amount of indiscriminate violence. My argument - and that of others, not least a fair few op-ed writers in Ha’aretz - was that the vicious and half-baked nature of the attack, suggest that it is mostly about party positioning in the face of a difficult election. Given the way in which Lipni, Barak and Netenyahu are now openly fighting with each other about war aims, it’s clear that the final sprint to the polls has begun.
Philip Dalidakis may be shocked, shocked to discover that Israeli politicians play politics, no-one else is, least not Israelis. As Eric Lundberg notes in his distinctive defence of the Knesset, banning the parties representing the country’s largest ethnic minority is what ‘colourful Israeli democracy is all about’.

Crucially, the one thing I didn’t do was venture any argument about who was at fault in the ceasefire collapse, what a reasonable settlement should amount to etc, Commentators like those above are keen on doing so because it’s the only way they can block out the knowledge of the evil being done in their name.

16. Networks belonging to Fatah/Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were the most prominent and
central in violating the lull arrangement. Their motivation was the desire to show themselves
as the standard bearers of the “resistance” (i.e., terrorism) and to send a message of
defiance to Hamas, their rivals, even though Fatah in Judea and Samaria renounced the
attacks.5 In certain instances the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or other organizations fired
rockets. In most instances they did not publicly claim responsibility. Such attacks were
motivated by deep internal Palestinian rivalries, especially between Fatah and Hamas, and not
responses to “violations” on the part of Israel.
17. During the first period Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire and its operatives
were not involved in rocket attacks. At the same time, the movement tried to enforce the
terms of the arrangement on the other terrorist organizations and to prevent them from
violating it. Hamas took a number of steps against networks which violated the arrangement,
but in a limited fashion and contenting itself with short-term detentions and confiscating
weapons. For example, a number of times Hamas’s security services detained Fatah/Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades operatives, including Abu Qusai, an Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades spokesman,
who claimed responsibility for rocket fire (June 29). Detained operatives were released after a
short interrogation and no real measures were taken against them. However, it was clear that
throughout the first period Hamas sought to avoid direct confrontations with the rogue
organizations (especially the PIJ) insofar as was possible, lest it be accused of collaborating
with Israel and harming the “resistance.” Hamas therefore focused on using politics to
convince the organizations to maintain the lull arrangement and on seeking support for it
within Gazan public opinion