The Crooked Course xxxiii he invited me to meet him at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. During the course of the conversation, he surprisingly asked what I would do with the peace process if I were him. I had just re-read his autobiography, Warrior, and answered: “Both as a soldier and as a politician, you have a history of being bold, daunting, daring and making surprise moves. In that spirit, 1 would suggest that you dismantle the settlements and pull your troops completely out of Gaza.” For a minute I worried that this would anger him, but he answered very calmly. “I cannot do it.” I asked why. He said: “Because of the harbor.” I replied, rather perplexed: “But there is no harbor in Gaza.” He said: “That’s not the point. They could build one if we left Gaza.” Then I realized that, contrary to common opinion, Sharon had no ideological inhibitions about leaving Gaza. His concerns were only about security. This gave me high hopes that he would eventually do it. Three years of stalemate were to follow. And then in December 2003, out of the blue, Sharon made the sweeping and stunning pronouncement that Israel would leave Gaza and end its occupation of the Strip. Ariel Sharon deserves praise for withdrawing from Gaza. But his unilateral move undermined the possibility of peaceful relations between the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and Israel. The PLO and the Palestinian Authority were sidelined. They could not claim credit for the move, and thus had scant motivation for supporting it. Instead, militants in Gaza and the West Bank harvested all the benefits. The Disengagement plan undermined those on the Palestinian side who claimed that the negotiating table was a more efficient tool than the barrel of a gun in order to resolve the conflict. ON PART II: PEACE PROPOSALS AND IDEAS The formal agreements covered in Part I represent the conclusions of long and complex diplomatic processes. Part II encompasses proposals and ideas that contributed to breaking taboos and ch