Olmert Continues Ignoring Reality

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's disturbingly simplistic mantra that nothing will stop him from retreating may appeal to his household, but it hardly serves as a replacement for a well-reasoned and coherent policy.

Mr. Olmert's team's struggle to sell retreat to the world has become so desperate that they have gone so far as to try to package it as implementation of the Road Map, stripped of the Road Map's requirements of Palestinian compliance.

That's right.

The same Olmert who keeps saying that he won't negotiate with the Palestinians unless they first fulfill their security obligations is the Olmert whose team says it is now planning to retreat from most of the West Bank, and allow for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the evacuated areas, if the Palestinians don't fulfill their security obligations.

That's a sovereign Palestinian state with access to the outside world via gateways not controlled by Israel.

Either the Olmert team has been so busy working on the retreat that they haven't had a chance to keep up with the news, or they simply don't care that the Rafiach Crossing has been a security failure in the absence of Israeli control.

That's a sovereign Palestinian state turning the most populous areas of Israel into one big Sderot, while Mr. Olmert is incapable or unwilling to protect the original Sderot from the consequences of the Gaza retreat.