Is Israel ready to leave the Gaza strip? Sharon plans complete withdrawal from Gaza Strip

I like how the headline assumes that Sharon has that dictatorial powers to make that decision by himself. Perhaps "Sharon to propose" would have been more accurate.

For the record, I'm all for unilateral separation if Israel really doesn't need the land for security reasons.

I still say in the long term one of two things will happen. Either a wave of democracy will spread over the Middle East and combined with Arafat's death a liberal Palestine will be born (remember I said long term). Or, Israel will withdraw either unilaterally or through negotiation to something close to it's 1967 borders, then when attacked will drive most of the Palestinians out of the West Bank for good. If both happen at the same time, the Palestinians would eventually take up residence in democratic Syria, Lebanon, etc. I am not assigning good or bad to any of this - just trying to imagine what might happen.