The deal Sharon is offering the Palestinians is a partial state in exchange for a partial peace. You don't want to renounce the "right of return" and accept Israel as a Jewish state? Fine, says Sharon, but for that all you get is a truncated state whose borders are controlled by Israel. Why would the Palestinians accept such a deal? Because they know that the only alternatives are the status quo, in which both sides bleed indefinitely, or making a full peace, neither of which they want.
Sharon's real objective is to get to the middle phase of the roadmap and park there until the Arab world is ready for peace, which may or may not ever happen. It is a reasonably comfortable place for a gradualist to be. Palestine may choose to be belligerent, but Israel will have a provisional border to defend and a state to hold accountable.
However, the risks are still quite high:
The risk of this plan is that statehood will be no more of a firewall against pressure to fulfill Palestinian demands than all the other agreements that the Palestinians sign and the world ignores. Eventually, the Palestinians will use terror again to force their next objective: a full Israeli unilateral withdrawal, without having to concede the demand of "return" to Israel.
The protections against this dangerous scenario are Israeli will and the trust of the United States. Sharon feels that he and Bush can be trusted to ensure that the dates in the roadmap do not mean that Israel will be forced to fill out Palestine's borders even if it turns out to be a terrorist state. Whether future Israeli and American leaders can be so trusted is another question. ...
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