Arik Returns

Ariel Sharon, Israel's
controversial mainstay
of the right, returns to
the top of Israeli politics.

c iRIC SILVER

Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem
n an attempt to outflank his
worried right wing, Binyamin
Netanyahu has appointed the
hard-line ex-general Ariel
Sharon as Israel's Foreign Minister.
∎ he prime minister had held the post
himself since the more dovish David
Levy resigned last January.
As one of Sharon's first tasks as
foreign minister, he has been invited
to accompany Netanyahu to this
week's Washington summit with the
Palestinian Authority President Yassir
Arafat, and President Bill Clinton.
Netanyahu has committed himself
`to a 13 percent West Bank withdraw-
al, something which Sharon had con-
demned as an unacceptable risk. As an
immediate concession to his new min-
ister, Netanyahu has agreed to move
the location of a to-be-created nature
reserve, ostensibly a buffer between
Jewish settlements and the Palestini-
ans, closer to the major settlements.
so Inevitably, the Palestinians will
treat Sharon's appointment with
intense suspicion. Is it a sign that
Netanyahu was bluffing when he
agreed to go to the summit? Or does
it mean that he will drive an even
harder bargain on Arafat's pledge to
fight terrorism?
To the Arabs, he is the Israeli with
the most blood on his hands: the
commando colonel who led ruthless
retaliatory raids against Palestinian
infiltrators in the 1950s; the general
who "pacified" the Gaza Strip after
the 1967 war; the Defense Minister
who sent his tanks to the gates of
Beirut in 1982 and was forced to
resign after Israel's Lebanese Christian
allies massacred hundreds of Pales-
Anians in the Sabra and Shatilla
refugee camps.
Sharon, now 70, has been a cham-
pion of Jewish. settlement in the West
Bank and Gaza ever since he served
as Agriculture Minister in the late
Menachem Begin's 1977 government.
As National Infrastructure Minister
under Netanyahu, he has steadfastly

C

resisted trading land for peace with
the Palestinians:
Yet he is more of a pragmatist than
an ideologue. It was Arik Sharon, a
protege of state-founder and Labor
Party bedrock David Ben-Gurion,
who paved the way for the 1978
Camp David accords with Egypt by .
advising Begin that Israel could evac-
uate the Sinai settlements without
jeopardizing its security. And it was
Sharon who supervised the destruc-
tion of those settlements after a peace
treaty had been signed. More recent-
ly, he won King Hussein's trust by
negotiating a generous water-sharing
deal with Jordan.
On the domestic front, Sharon's
promotion is a signal to the prime
minister's coalition partners that he is
not going soft on the Palestinians.
Even though he is committed to ful-
filling the 1993 Oslo peace agree-
ment, however reluctantly, he will go
on struggling to limit what he has

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Ariel Sharon, in back, and Binyamin
Netanyahu look at a map.

always seen as the "damage".
Netanyahu calculates that the
appointment will be enough to dis-
suade his most dangerous critics, the
pro-settler National Religious Party
with nine Knesset votes, from carrying
out their threat to bring down the gov-
ernment. The Israeli media have report-
ed that he intends to offer the NRP
Sharon's old ministry, giving them a
fourth seat in his cabinet. Netanyahu
constantly reminds them that the alter-
native to his rule could well be a coali-
tion of the left, which would cede even
more to the Palestinians. ❑

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DWROIT
JEWISH NEWS

10/16

1998

Detroit Jewish News

117