Disengagement - If Only...

A final thought as the Disengagement from Gaza gets underway.

I've been struggling with how to sum up my own position, since it isn't quite as straightforward as just plain "pro" or "anti". I guess the simplest description is that I would be pro-disengagement if it were being done differently, but I'm anti-disengagement as it's actually being implemented, as well as emotionally.

I've written before that the major problem with the way Sharon implemented disengagement was a lack of negotiation skills. To be more specific, I think if all of the following had taken place, I would be at least guardedly pro-disengagement:

• Simultaneously with exiting Gaza, Israel annexed some of the consensus areas like Ariel or Gush Etzion
  
• Withdrawal based not on the 1967 lines - which buys into the Arab position on UN Resolution 242 - but on achieving maximal separation from the Arabs with minimal impact to Jewish residents. E.g., there was no reason to leave the far northern Gaza communities, like Elei Sinai, that are contiguous with pre-67 Israel.
• Israeli approval of disengagement based either on a popular referendum, or relatively soon after a new election in which disengagement was actually the platform of the winning party, instead of being an 180-degree about face
• Supreme effort taken to explain/sell the disengagement to the nation
  
• A preference for compromise over compulsion in every possible aspect of its planning and implementation
  

I can't resist the following comparison, frivolous as it may seem. But Sharon's current approach reminds me of a scene in the great movie Superman II. General Zod, the Kryptonian fugitive who conquers the earth (while Supes is off cavorting with Lois), breaks into the Oval Office and demands that the President kneel before him. One of a group of men immediately, wordlessly complies, whereupon Zod exclaims: "You are not the President. No one who leads so many, could possibly kneel so quickly!" The real President then emerges from behind his protectors, and states "I am the man they are protecting. I am the President! And I will kneel before you, if it will save lives!"

Why is Sharon kneeling to Zod, with no explanation, and with no conditionals?