Dan Schueftan (Hebrew: דן שיפטן; also Dan Shiftan)
[1]) is an Israeli academic and chairman of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa. He also serves as a senior lecturer at Haifa University's School of Political Sciences.[2] He has taught at the Israel Defense Forces National Security College and the IDF's Command and Staff College.[3]
Career, views
Dan Schueftan was an advisor to Israel's National Security Council,[4] and to former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin[5] and Ariel Sharon.[6]
Schueftan served as a consultant to Israeli decision-makers and the top echelon of Israel's foreign policy and defense establishments, also briefing European and American political leaders and senior officers. He is the author of several books on contemporary Middle Eastern history.[7]
Schueftan is credited with having advanced the concept of "unilateral disengagement" or "unilateral separation", as articulated in his 1999 book, "Disengagement: Israel and the Palestinian Entity".[8] The book is cited as having formed the basis for the concept of Separation from the Palestinians.[9][10][11]
In Schueftan's view, Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza is a first step in a wider historical process. He told The Jerusalem Report in September 2005 that: "I can even pin dates on it. In 2007 or 2008 we will have another major disengagement in the West Bank. And within a decade, we will unilaterally repartition Jerusalem along lines we will unilaterally select ... What Israelis have understood — and this is the underlying feature of the disengagement — is that we need to leave Gaza and Nablus, not because it will bring peace, but because there will be perpetual terror. We need to leave Gaza and Nablus because Israel with them is weaker than Israel without them."[10]
