Olmert’s unharmonic “convergence” plan

In addition to her work as a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick is also the senior Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington. She has just written a policy paper for the center explaining the likely consequences of Ehud Olmert’s planned withdrawal from the West Bank on Israel, Jordan and the United States.

If you have kept up with her columns over the past several years, you know that she believes withdrawal entails adverse consequences for the US-led war against the global jihad. Has anyone in the administration even slightly focused on this issue and thought it through? When Olmert arrives in Washington on May 23 to seek American support for his plan, he seems likely to get it. Glick seeks to to put this issue on the public agenda for debate ahead of Olmert’s arrival in order to try to avert the likely consequences of the plan’s implementation.

Glick sets forth her view of the likely impact of withdrawl on the United States at pages 15-18 of her paper. In her conclusion, she writes:

On its surface, Olmert’s convergence plan appears to align with U.S. national security interests by seeming to enhance both the traditional American support for a land-for-peace formula that will bring about the establishment of a peaceful Palestinian state, and the traditional U.S. opposition to Israeli settlement of the West Bank. However, when the convergence plan is examined critically, it becomes clear that if the U.S. government lends its support to the plan’s implementation, it will undermine its most important interests in the Middle East – namely the defeat of jihadist forces and the fostering of security, freedom, democracy and liberal values throughout the Arab and Islamic world.

It’s a powerful indictment, and the evidence adduced by Glick in connection with the Gaza “disengagement” seems persuasive to me. The center has posted a copy of Glick’s paper in PDF: “Ehud Olmert’s convergence plan for the West Bank and U.S. Middle East policy.” Please check it out.

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