As Jews around the world mark the New Year with the holiday of Rosh Hashana, the prime minister of Israel is warning publicly of the possibility of a civil war in the Jewish state. The trigger would be the debate over whether Israel should withdraw its settlements from Gaza, as Mr. Sharon has suggested, and, eventually, from parts of the West Bank.

Mr. Sharon’s decision to seek a full withdrawal from Gaza cannot have been an easy one. The area is described in the Bible as part of the land God granted to Israel, and Jews have lived and flourished there for thousands of years. Though there may be individual exceptions, the Gaza settlers are not a movement of wild-eyed lunatics, as they have often been caricatured. The historical and religious arguments that undergird their presence there are profound and not all that different from what justifies the Jewish claim to the rest of Israel.

The withdrawal is being advanced by Israel for security reasons, to preserve lives in the midst of an onslaught by Islamic terrorists. Broadly speaking, it is the same war that brought an attack on New York on September 11, 2001, and that Americans in Iraq are fighting daily. The pullout Israel contemplates from Gaza is a retreat to a perimeter that Mr. Sharon, a general and master of strategy, sees as more secure. It is not a decision that is made entirely freely by Israel, but one that is forced by Arab terrorist violence. Absent the violence, there is no reason that 7,000 Jews should not be able to re main and live freely and safely in Gaza, whether it is administered by Israel or the Arabs.

That admission – that there are places within historical and biblical Israel in which modern democratic Israel is unable or unwilling to guarantee militarily the safety of Jews in the face of a terrorist assault – is what makes Mr. Sharon’s decision such a dramatic one and what prompts the vehement opposition to it. Mr. Sharon is derided by the American left and by Arab enemies as a hard-liner. In fact he’s shown pragmatism and flexibility with the Gaza withdrawal plan.

The editors of the Sun are mindful of the fact that Israel has had internal violence before. In 1994, a Jewish assassin killed Yitzhak Rabin, the Labor Party prime minister. In 1948, Israeli forces allied with the Labor Party shelled a ship, the Altalena, that was full of arms bound for a rival faction of troops loyal to Menachem Begin. A painting of the Altalena hangs in the editorial rooms of the Sun, a reminder of the fact that both sides of Israel’s internal struggle are filled with patriots.

So it is today. Mr. Sharon is a giant. His critics include giants, such as Natan Sharansky. One thing nearly all American supporters of Israel agree on is the hope that this time around Israel settles its internal differences peacefully and through the workings of its democracy. And that the year ahead moves us closer to a world where Jews are not forced by external terrorist violence to withdraw from Gaza or from anywhere where they wish to live in peace.