World
ANALYSIS
End Of The Beginning
Ariel Sharon personified Israel's formative era.
Sharon refused to meet with
an unremitting foe of the
Arafat, and eventually mounted a.
Palestinian organization and its
counteroffensive that
leader, Yasser Arafat. A
rrespective of his prospects
destroyed the terrorists'
for recovery, Ariel Sharon has Palestinian state already
infrastructure and left
existed, Sharon claimed,
clearly ended his term as
Arafat isolated and
situated in a large part
Israel's prime minister and as the
besieged in his West
of what was formerly
leader of the nascent Kadima
Bank headquarters. But
British Mandated
Party, which -was expected to win
then Sharon again
Palestine and comprised
a landslide victory in the coming
pulled a volte-face and
of a large Palestinian
national elections.
began
stressing the
majority – Jordan – and
His passing from public life
need
to
make "painful
there was no need to
represents not only the fall of the
Mich
ael
B;
sacrifices"
for peace,
establish another.
pre-eininent figure in current
Or
en
and
became
the first
In the mid-1970s, he
Israeli politics but, more funda-
Israeli
prime
minister
to
the
I
Specia
staunchly opposed the
mentally, the conclus' ion of the
to
publicly
endorse
the
peace overtures of
Jewis h N ews
formative era in Israel's history –
creation
of
a
Egyptian
President
a period Sharon personified.
Palestinian state.
Anwar Sadat, and pro-
Sharon has been intimately
But what appeared
moted
the
construction
identified with every major event
to
be
inconsistencies
in Sharon's
of
Israeli
settlements
in
the
occu-
in that history. An infantry officer
positions
was
often
merely
a
pied
Sinai
Peninsula.
But
the
same
in the desperate battle for the
reflection
of
his
ability
to
sense
Sharon
also
uprooted
settlements
Jerusalem corridor in the 1948
out the preferences of the Israeli
and withdrew Israeli troops from
War of Independence, leader of
the paratroopers in the 1956 Sinai Sinai in 1982- to fulfill the terms of mainstream.
When it became clear that the
Israel's peace agreement with
campaign, he rose to the rank of
majority of Israelis would no
Egypt.
general and commanded divi-
longer fight to defend 8,000
Several Israeli leaders, Begin
sions in the Six-Day War of 1967
Jewish settlers in Gaza and were
included, feared that Sharon
and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
no longer willing to occupy the
posed a threat to the country's
As a government minister, he
Strip, he evacuated settlements
democracy. Nevertheless, when a
was the architect of the Israeli
and left the Gaza Palestinians to
state investigation found him
invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and
morally culpable for the massacre shoot at one another.
the primary force behind the set-
When Israelis overwhelmingly
of Palestinian.civilians by
tlement movement.
supported
the construction of a
Christian militiamen in Beirut's
With the sole exception of
West
Bank
fence; Mr. Sharon, who
Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps,
Shimon Peres, he has been a
originally
opposed
the barrier,
then-Defense Minister Ariel
member of the Knesset longer
began
to
build
it.
Sharon promptly complied with
than any other Israeli, and he
When most Israelis despaired
the court's finding and resigned.
remains unsurpassed in his abili-
of
the status quo with the
No
issue
more
starkly
demon-
ty to forge and maintain coali-
Palestinians
but gave up on the •
the
twists
in
Sharon's
poli-
strated
tions. He began his political
possibility
of
finding a Palestinian
cies
than
the
so-called
Oslo
peace
career on the left, swung keenly
leadership
able
to negotiate .
accords
Israel
signed
with
Yasser
right, and concluded in the center.
Israel's
borders,
Sharon
broke
Arafat
in
1993.
Whether
as
a
Sharon, more than any single
leader of the rightwing opposition away from the status-quo Likud
Israeli, represented the finest
and founded Kadima, a party
or as a minister in the Likud-led
ideals of the Jewish state – its
capable of redrawing Israel's bor-
government of Benjamin
heroism, resilience and versatility
ders unilaterally.
– as well as many of its most con- Netanyahu, Sharon consistently
Israel's image in the world 'has
warned that Arafat would never
troversial policies.
changed radically since its found-
abandon terrorism, and that the
And, like Israel, Sharon was a
ing, and so too have international
Oslo process was leading Israel
ganglion of contradictions. The
•perceptions of Ariel Sharon.
toward disaster.
party he formed in 1977,
Revered after its struggle for inde-
His predictions were borne out
Shlomzion, advocated negotia-
pendence in 1948, Israel was then
in 2000, when Arafat's Al Fatah
tions with the Palestine
faction joined with Islamic terror- . reviled for its part in the Anglo-
Liberation Organization and the
French invasion of Egypt in 1956.
ist groups in launching a war of
creation of a Palestinian state in
Respected after its lightning
suicide bombers and roadside
territories captured by Israel in
military
victory in 1967, and for
ambushes that devastated Israel's
1967.
its
stubborn
resistance to the
economy and nearly shattered its
Joining the Likud, however,
Syria-Egypt
assault
of 1973, Israel
society.
then under the leadership of
again
became
a
target
for interna-
Elected
in
February
2001,
Menachem Begin, Sharon became
Jerusalem
I
tional censure because of its occu-
pation of the West Bank and Gaza
and its settlement policy.
That opprobrium intensified in
the years after 2000, when much
of the world — the Europeans, in
particular — blamed Israel for
provoking Palestinian terror and
for employing brutal tactics to
counter it.
The international image of
Sharon — at first perceived as a
stalwart warrior but later as a
trenchant enemy of peaCe — has
closely mirrored these vicissi-
tudes.
The early stage of his premier-
ship was marked by demonstra-
tions throughout Western Europe
comparing Sharon to Hitler and
accusing hirh of war crimes. In
the wake of the Gaza withdrawal,
though, the international commu-
nity began to view Israel in a
more positive light. The once uni-
versally maligned Sharon was
feted at the U.N. and lauded by
many of his former European
critics as a peacemaker and a
statesman.
Mr. Sharon's relations with the
United States, especially, have fol-
lowed a pattern established by
previous Israeli prime ministers.
Willing to irk or even antagonize
•American leaders on matters
relating to Israeli security and its
territorial claims, Sharon, like his
- predecessors, has labored to main-
tain close rapport With the U.S.
In spite-of occasionally spiking
tensions arising from Israel's con-
duct of the war on terror and the
course of the separation fence,
Sharon has succeeded in estab-
lishing remarkably robust ties
with the Bush administration, and
strengthening the historicalaffin-
ity between Israel and the U.S.
The blond and handsome corn-
mando and severely overweight
politico, the "bulldozer" who
pushed thousands of Israelis in
and out of settlements, the lover
of Hebrew culture whose first lan-
guage was Russian, the secularist
who revered Jewish faith, the
fighter of many wars and the
champion, ultimately, of peace —
Ariel Sharon has had multiple
identities.
And yet he has always been
thoroughly Israeli, the embodi-
ment of the state's protean and
paradoxical nature.
Now, with his withdrawal from
the political scene, Israel stands
to enter a new phase in its
national existence. Less divided,
perhaps, and more certain of the
borders it wants and the type of
society it aspires to create; sepa-
rated from the Palestinians but
open to compromise with them;
preserving productive relations
with the international communi-
ty and an unshakeable alliance
with the United States.
That is the Israel that Ariel
Sharon has left us, a formidable
legacy for facing the future. 17
Michael Oren, a senior fellow at the
Shalom Center in Jerusalem, is the
author of "Six Days of War: June
1967 and the Making of the Modern
Middle East" (Oxford University
Press, 2002).
AnsweringisraersCritics
The Charge: Israel is belligerent toward its neigh-
bor Syria, which is a peaceful nation, wanting only return of its
lands on the Golan Heights.
The•Answer: Israel recently charged Syria with
continuing to fund Palestinian terrorists, allowing terrorist train-
ing camps on Syrian soil and giving Hezbollah terrorists in
Lebanon a "green light" to attack Israel. Syria hosts the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard, blocks the Lebanese army from deploying
along Israel's border, maintains a missile system along Israel's
border and withholds information on Israeli MIAs and hostages.
— Allan Gale, Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit
j24
January 26 • 2006
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