Government sources indicated that the English name of the police may change.
By HERB KEINONsettlement 88(photo credit: )
Now that the adjectives "acting" and "interim" have officially been removed from Ehud Olmert's prime ministerial title, get ready for another significant semantic change: Olmert's "convergence plan" is on the verge of morphing into the "consolidation plan."
Government sources confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that there were discussions afoot to change the English translation of the name of Olmert's plan to unilaterally withdraw from much of the West Bank and beef up a few large settlement blocks contiguous to the Green Line, called hitkansut in Hebrew, to something that makes more sense in English than "convergence."
The name change, however, is to have no impact on the policy.
One official admitted that the problem with "convergence," the name that came directly from the Prime Minister's Office, is that the word doesn't really mean anything. Indeed, it sounds more like a geometric term than a diplomatic one.
"Consolidation," however, signifies what is being discussed - consolidating the existing settlement blocs.
One problem some are having with the word "consolidation," however, is that it sounds too military, too much like what an army does before waging battle.
Two words that are not being discussed are disengagement and withdrawal.
"Disengagement" was ruled out because, unlike the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, the objective now is to set the country's final borders, and not just to leave one geographic area.
And withdrawal was ruled out, one official said, because it sounds too much like surrender.
