Israel and the settlements.

Those who have consistently supported Israel, but not "Greater Israel," could be excused for experiencing a sense of vindication as one right-of-center Israeli leader after another has urged unilateral Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank or Gaza Strip, at least from those settlements that are most difficult to justify or defend. The Likud's Yuval Steinitz, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, has called for a pullback from the Gaza Strip, leaving the Palestinians to form their state there. Ehud Olmert, mayor of Jerusalem and a likely future candidate for prime minister, wants to abandon both Gaza and the more remote West Bank settlements. Others urge partial withdrawal as long as Israel annexes the remaining land--a formula that reportedly carries the blessing of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Why the change in thinking among Israeli hard-liners? Surely one reason is the cost of the eroding but still troublesome Intifada. Another is the demographic threat of a Palestinian population that may one day reject a two-state solution and urge instead majority rule in a single political entity. Finally, the Israelis don't trust Palestinian negotiators. With or without Arafat, they want no Oslo redux. Defensible borders, they say, are more important than negotiated borders; and, particularly with the erasure of the Iraqi threat from the east, Israel's borders have never been more defensible.

But a closer analysis suggests that the advantages of a partial withdrawal are modest and the downsides, great. A pullback would be treated by Palestinian extremists as a great victory--a vindication for their strategy of terror. They would seize the abandoned land and continue their jihad ...