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And in 1977, when Menachem Begin's long quest for political respec- tability finally propelled him into the prime min- ister's slot, Sharon was ap- pointed minister of agriculture — a post he used to continue his long quest to create a new reality "on the ground" in the occupied ter- ritories by vastly expanding Jewish settlements in the region. In person, Sharon is a sur- prise. The popular image of a severe, humorless man, the kind of person who can shrug off the continuing carnage in Lebanon as a kind of regional idiosyn- crasy, is contradicted by an the almost jovial person sit- ting down for the interview. In his widely praised biography of Menachem Begin, Amos Perlmutter depicts Sharon in harsh terms. "Ariel Sharon's sheer courage and tactical ability made him one of Israel's greatest generals, but his hubris and pride, his over- weening ambition, and his very justified image as a brutal man have blotted his reputation irrevocably," Perlmutter writes. But the Ariel Sharon of 1989 is the consummate pol- itician. He is at ease with an aggressive press corps; he smoothly deflects the toughest questions, and takes pains to counter the brutal image by displaying concern for the people with whom he has served. His sentimentality about the land, about his family, seem deep-felt and genuine. He speaks movingly of the per- sonal tragedies in his life — the death of his young wife, and a few years later, the death of his son in a freak shooting accident. In fact, he seems very much like an American poli- tician — amiable, patriotic, a decent guy who wants only the best for his country. He speaks with just the right combination of candor and caution. His obvious polit- ical ambitions can even come across as a likable trait; this is a man who en- joys the political process, and believes in his own cause with an almost appeal- ing intensity. It is only when he talks about his greatest personal crisis that some of the anger comes through. By the early 1980s, Ariel Sharon was riding high as defense minister in the se- cond Likud government headed by Menachem Begin. According to his critics, he used the position to reshape the IDF in a more aggressive mold. And the target all along, critics charge, was Lebanon and its legions of PLO fighters. To this day, Sharon vigor- ously defends the necessity of rooting out the PLO's "kingdom of terror" by in- vading Lebanon in 1982. "The target was to elim- inate terrorist bases," he says. "People don't re- member that there were about 500 guns and rocket launchers along the border, tremendous depots of am- munition. There were "When the Israeli underground movement fought the British, the targets were never civilians. Only military targets." underground fortifications, about 100 tanks. There were 15,000 armed terrorists along the northern border. The entire population of the northern border became hostages. Jews were attack- ed abroad; ambassadors were attacked." He denies that his goal all along was to guarantee Israeli rule over the occupied territories by destroying the PLO once and for all. But he acknowledges that the onset of the war and the successes of the IDF opened up some new possibilities for Israel's leaders. But these opportunities, he argues, were largely wasted. "First there were our own mistakes," he says. "For in- stance, today I would have to think about allowing foreign armies — and you have to re- fer to the Lebanese Phalange forces as an army — to act together with Israeli forces. There were many other mistakes. We hesitated, the government took too long, things like that." He leaves little doubt about who was responsible for this hesitation. "The Labor Party tried to overthrow a democratically elected government," he says. "That is something that never happened before in Israel: a war as the reason for overthrowing the