TEL AVIV , 8 June 2004 — Israeli politicians and pundits were divided yesterday on whether the long-awaited Cabinet decision on Premier Ariel Sharon’s pullout plan from Gaza was an achievement of historic importance, or a capitulation to opponents of the plan.

The document which Sharon eventually managed to scrape through his Cabinet Sunday night is a declaration of intentions to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip and a small area in the West Bank.

But it postpones the actual decision to evacuate settlements for another nine months.

One Israeli commentator yesterday compared the Cabinet decision to a decision to get engaged, buy the ring, book the wedding hall, but put off the decision to go ahead with the marriage to a later date.

A better comparison would perhaps be a decision in principal to get a divorce from the Palestinians, but delay signing the divorce papers until all preparations are completed.

Its final wording — the result of nearly two weeks of political maneuvering and compromise talks between hard-liners and Sharon supporters — is at least ambiguous and at most a plain contradiction in terms.

On the one hand, the document states that the government authorizes Sharon’s “revised disengagement plan”, which is summed up in an appendix clearly stating that it involves evacuating all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the West Bank.

On the other it stresses: “This decision in itself is not a decision to evacuate settlements.”It authorizes Sharon’s staff to go ahead with its preparations for the evacuation of the 25 Gaza and West Bank settlements, which it divides into four groups, but obliges the premier to seek separate Cabinet approval on the actual evacuation of each of the four groups once those preparations are completed.Sharon told the Cabinet the preparation period would end by March 1 next year. The appendix attached to the Cabinet decision adds that the intention is to complete the evacuation process by the end of 2005.

Sharon and his supporters called the decision a “step of great importance” and argued that the compromise enabled the premier to go ahead with the plan despite the fierce opposition he faced.

Adding the clause that the decision meant no green light to evacuate settlements enabled ministers fearful of their hard-line constituents to dissociate themselves from any settlement evacuation, but still vote for the revised disengagement plan.The clause “does not diminish Sharon’s strategic victory”, wrote Nehama Duek of the Israeli Yediot Ahronot daily yesterday. “Yesterday the Cabinet made a historic decision stating that Jews will not remain in the Gaza Strip in the future.”The authoritative Ha’aretz daily, too, wrote that the three ministers of Sharon’s own Likud party who had opposed evacuating settlements most strongly but eventually voted for the compromise, “had to make do with insignificant semantic changes”.

But Dan Margelit, an analyst in the Ma’ariv newspaper, called the decision an “as you like it program”. “Read the sections that appeal to you. Tear out the sections you don’t like. It’s got everything. That’s why it doesn’t have much,” he wrote.

Yossi Sarid, a left-liberal legislator known for his sarcastic comments, called the decision “a decision not to decide”.

“The battle over the pullout from the Gaza Strip did not end yesterday,” summed up Yediot pundit Nahum Barnea. “It has just begun.