Mr Sharon's Gaza pullout had nothing to do with Palestinian independence. Rather, it would consolidate the 300 settlements in the West Bank -- with 400,000 Israelis -- and prevent a sovereign Palestinian state's emergence.

Israeli writer Meron Benvenisti says this would have helped Mr Sharon "improve" the demographic situation by removing 1.5 million Palestinians from Israeli control" and reduce the danger that Israel "will cease to be a Jewish state."

"Disengagement" wouldn't have ended Israel's control over Gaza. It would continue to dominate its airspace and sea and land approaches, and could even send its troops back. The April 14 Bush-Sharon memorandum explicitly provides for this.

"After the pullout, Gaza would have become a prison republic," says Azmi Bishara, a distinguished Israeli-Palestinian philosopher and member of parliament.

The pullout would have furthered Palestine's occupation -- violating UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, the Geneva Conventions, and global public opinion. Its rejection by a minuscule minority shows the clout of Israel's Hard-Right Settler Lobby.

I surveyed the vitiated Palestine-Israel situation during a fortnight-long trip to several cities and West Bank villages (although not to Gaza, which was closed following Hamas leader Rantissi's assassination).

I witnessed "apartheid in practice" I don't use these words loosely. I was active in the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the 1980s and closely followed the debates over the "pass laws" and "Bantustan" proposals. It's hard to demarcate Israel's Palestine policy from the ideology and politics of apartheid (literally, "separateness") based on ethnicity.

Israel's creation was meant to correct a terrible historic wrong, culminating in the Holocaust. Instead, it created another catastrophe -- the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians. By 1948, Israel held 78 percent of historic Palestine's land although Jews were only a third of the population. Israel turned the remaining Palestinians into second-class citizens. In 1967, it occupied the West Bank and Gaza, displacing 325,000 people.

The key issue in this unhappy land is not Hamas-style terrorism, condemnable as that is. The central issue is Israel's military occupation -- brutal, oppressive and dehumanising.

The occupation is worse than, say, colonialism in South Asia. Over half-a-century, the British relaxed their iron-grip over India. During the past half-century, Israel has tightened its grip over the Palestinians.

Israel has confiscated 24 percent of West Bank-Gaza's and 89 percent of East Jerusalem's land for settlements, highways and military installations. It controls four-fifths of the water resources of the Occupied Territories (OT) and also lifts water from the Jordan River.

Israel's tyranny and human-rights violations have reduced the Palestinians' daily life to harassment and humiliation. They have no freedom of movement. The Palestinian Authority, created by the Oslo accords, represents municipal government. Its writ doesn't run even in Ramallah. Until a few weeks ago, the Israelis would shoot at its police if it wore uniforms.

Israel, backed as never before by Washington, isn't willing to end the occupation. Despite initial promise, the "peace process" became, in its Oslo format, an instrument of injustice.

Events took an ugly turn in September 2000, when Mr. Sharon provocatively marched on the holy Haram-al-Sharif. Israel's recent repression of resistance has been ferocious, and bled the Palestinian economy white.

Israel's military campaigns have killed 2,984 people, including 500 children. According to a UN estimate, closures and military operations have drained $2.4 billion out of the Palestinian economy. Palestinians have lost more than $4 billion in income.

Israel is the world's 16th wealthiest country. The Palestinian economy is among the world's poorest. It has shrunk by one-half in three years. Agriculture and services are in acute distress. Seventy percent of firms have closed or severely reduced production.

Unemployment is 67 percent in Gaza and 50 percent in the West Bank. The OT poverty-ratio has worsened gravely -- from 20 to 75 percent. Half its people require food aid.

The misery's cause lies in Israeli-imposed closures and "anti-terrorist" military operations. Israel's goal is to reduce Palestine to a cluster of Bantustans without contiguous territory. This cannot be done except by practising a kind of apartheid --separateness.

Mr. Sharon is killing the US-Europe-Russia-UN-sponsored "Road Map" although it was biased in Israel's favour. He wants to confine the Palestinians to tiny, depressed enclaves and keep them out of richer areas. He subjects them to harassment and economic punishment to break their will.

Israel has established created 760 checkpoints to prevent people's movements in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel is demolishing peoples' homes to impose ethnic segregation. Over three years, 4,000 houses were destroyed, and 15,000 damaged. (Besides, lakhs of olive trees were uprooted.)

That's where the 700 km-long "Apartheid Wall" comes in. Israel started building this fence inside Palestinian territory to enclose the settlements into Israel. I visited the Wall at Abu Dis near Jerusalem. It cuts village after village into two, with the local school on one side, and the cemetery on the other.

The monstrous $2 billion Wall isn't a temporary structure. It's designed to tear Palestinian society into shreds.

The gravest immediate danger is that of Palestine becoming a cluster of Bantustans without contiguous territory, sovereignty or independence.

Palestine's occupation is the worst legacy of colonialism -- like Vietnam in the 1970s or South Africa in the 1980s. Fighting it demands international solidarity. The global community won't find it easy to rein in a roguish Israel, backed closely by the US. Only a genuinely multilateral initiative can change things.

Much will depend on what happens in Iraq, where US plans for Empire face their gravest crisis. If the global balance-of-power changes, the US and Israel could yet be forced to see reason.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.