“Two scripts for the day after”

Many Israelis have found out about the confrontation between Moshe Ya’alon and Avi Dichter concerning the Gaza post-withdrawal political-security forecast. However, while their opinions differ about the withdrawal short term effects, there is far less disagreement between them when it comes to the lessons learned from the failures of Oslo, Camp David and Taba, and to long-term developments.
Today, there are two potential scenarios for the day after the withdrawal. According to the most optimistic one, the majority of the Palestinians believe that terror has basically failed and that it is still possible to rehabilitate the economy and a political entity with the support of the United States. But the pessimistic script says that after the withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinians will trigger a wave of attacks and will do anything possible to obtain more. That was the strategy used by Yasser Arafat before and after Camp David. Ya’alon and Dichter admitted that this scenario is most likely, since despite the developments, the Palestinians consider the disengagement a victory of terrorism. That will be prejudicial to them, but such logical conclusion has not affected the extremists.
We have to examine how Mahmud Abbas fights terror in order to draw the conclusions.