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 THERE IS a fierce argument raging inside the Israeli right-wing coalition government concerning Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and evacuate the settlements. It is clear that the majority of the ministers who represent parties that support settlers are against Sharon’s plan, something that forced the Israeli PM to fire two of his extreme ministers, one of whom disappeared to play cat and mouse with Sharon’s emissaries hoping to destroy his plan to gain an artificial majority for his plan.

Whether Sharon is able to gather the needed eleven votes to pass his withdrawal plan from Gaza to his cabinet or not, however, is not the problem. The question is whether he has the ability to implement the plan when it is approved. There is a great difference between the Israeli government’s approval of any decision and in taking it off the paper and actually implementing it.

When assuming his post, Sharon’s reputation was that of a strong man able to impose peace on Israeli society and the only leader able to face down the right wing. Some even compared him with the French leader Charles de Gaulle. But the experience of past weeks and months have not supported the theory that Sharon is “the man for difficult peace missions,” or even a man able to impose his will on the settlers.

The clear evidence of Sharon’s weakness in confronting the settlers and forcing them to evacuate settlements was the case of the small isolated West Yetshar settlement that was established on March 30, 2001. Despite vast numbers of Israeli security personnel, the Israeli government was eventually forced to back down after the settlers went to the Israeli courts to challenge the dismantling. The settlement still stands.

The question among a great sector of Israeli public opinion as well as the Palestinian, Arabic and international community, is this: Can Sharon, who was not able to dismantle a small settlement in the northern West Bank, really evacuate 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, in addition to another four settlements in the West Bank? The optimistic view that he can, is based on the evacuations of the Sinai settlements by Sharon himself when he was the Defense Minister in the first Likud government led by Menachem Begin following the signing of the Camp David agreement with Egypt. But others point out the difference today in the relationship between the Israelis and Palestinians and the relationship then between Egypt and Israel.