SHARON TO GIVE UP WEST BANK?

FORMER CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL MARTIN INDYK THINKS SHARON WILL GIVE UP NEARLY ALL OF THE WEST BANK:

Sharon's new map
During his stints as ambassador here and assistant secretary of state in Washington, Indyk clocked up innumerable Sharon hours. He pored over the Israel map that Sharon would carry with him, and heard, over and over, "the lecture" Sharon would give about the transcendent importance of Kfar Darom and Netzarim to Israel's long-term security.

Now, says Indyk, "I think Sharon has a new map. The old one that he used to carry around with him got a bit too tattered." And that new map, in Sharon's head, he believes, shows an Israel not only, obviously, without Gaza, but also without most of the West Bank, too.

It's a map that features an undivided Jerusalem. It certainly includes the Golan Heights. But in Judea and Samaria, it extends to the current route of the security barrier, incorporates the Etzion Bloc, Ariel and the Ma'aleh Adumim area settlements, and little more.

In a week when The Jerusalem Post quoted advisers to the prime minister saying he wanted another term in office so that he would be the man to determine the route of Israel's final borders - "because he thinks that only he can do it, because he knows the land and this is his historic mission" - Indyk plainly takes a similar view of Sharon's intentions....

"Sharon's vision is not of an Israel at peace with its neighbors," says Indyk. "He doesn't believe that is possible. It's of a robust Jewish state with Jerusalem the undivided capital." ....

So what altered him? "His sense of what is crucial to Israel as a robust Jewish state… He understands that the demographic threat is far more important than the conventional threat. Kfar Darom and Netzarim played a role in countering the conventional threat. But they are counterproductive in terms of demography, and in terms of the terror threat, where you need fewer targets."