A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Israel ]
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[Admired and reviled, Sharon gains in Israel
War hero is front-runner in Tuesday's vote
By DEBORAH HORAN
Copyright 2001 Special to the Chronicle
Feb. 3, 2001, 11:17PM
JERUSALEM - In the heat of the 1973 Middle East war, Ariel Sharon led thousands of Israeli troops across the Suez Canal in a bold strike that some generals had written off as too risky.
As tank battles raged around him in the darkness, Sharon ordered his troops to silently cross the canal into Egypt in rubber rafts and small pontoons.
For 36 hours, the Israelis ferried across the waterway, undetected by enemy forces. By the time the Egyptians caught wind of the operation, Sharon's troops had moved enough equipment and troops to the west bank of the canal to defend their new position.
The amphibious operation was viewed as a turning point in the Yom Kippur War, which Israel won, and a defining moment in the career of Sharon, the front-runner in Tuesday's election for Israeli prime minister.
During the Egyptian offensive, Sharon was forever cast in the eyes of Israelis as an indomitable military man with a determination to win at all costs. Later, as he pressed into Lebanon and planted Jewish settlements across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, that reputation helped him earn the fervent respect of some and the revulsion of others.
Now, as the race for prime minister nears the finish line, pollsters say Sharon's image as a strong, experienced leader appeals to voters who are weary of the 4-month-old Palestinian uprising and disillusioned with the direction of peace talks. In opinion polls released last week, Sharon, 72, led Prime Minister Ehud Barak by as many as 21 percentage points.
Yet over the years, few public figures have polarized Israelis more than Sharon.
"You can't find a more controversial person than him, admired by some and hated by others," said Daniel Ben Simon, a political columnist for the daily newspaper Haaretz. "He has been nicknamed almost anything you can imagine - a madman, a wild warrior, a bulldozer, the most dangerous guy in the country, someone who will set the Middle East on fire."
"For better or for worse," Ben Simon said in an interview, "this guy has really made a difference."
Burly, brusque and tenacious, Sharon has been indelibly linked to the history of Israel since the Jewish state was established in 1948. Winning the highest office in the nation Tuesday would cap a public career that has spanned decades.
Born in British Palestine in 1928 to Jewish immigrants from Russia, he fought in Israel's war of independence and later rose to the rank of army general.
He solidified his reputation as a hero during the 1973 war, which began when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Israel counterattacked, driving back Syrian forces and crossing the Suez Canal into Egypt.
To his supporters, Sharon is a can-do leader who puts his ideology into action. In the 1970s, as minister of agriculture, he was instrumental in establishing Jewish villages in Israel's predominantly Arab Galilee region.
Later, he carried his pro-settlement ideology into Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands, working to fulfill his vision of housing 2 million Jews there, despite the obstacles inherent in a plan to populate territory already inhabited by Arabs.
Sharon argued that Israelis should establish as many tiny communities in the occupied territories as possible to prevent the emergence of a future Palestinian state. He used his positions in various government ministries to pull strings and provide funding to settlements.
With his help, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has grown from a few dozen in 1968 to more than 200,000 today.
"He knew that if he would build settlements all around, (the West Bank) could not be divided," said Benny Kashriel, a longtime Sharon confidant who serves as mayor of Maale Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank. "He all the time looks to the long-term consequences. He knows the goal and how to achieve it.
"He's a guy who thinks 10 times before giving a promise," Kashriel added. "Once you have his promise, you can sleep quietly."
To his detractors, Sharon is an unrepentant ideologue whose willingness to use military force has known few bounds. Critics blame him for leading Israel into a prolonged war in Lebanon when in 1981 he formulated a grand scheme to oust the Palestine Liberation Organization from that country.
By 1982, with Sharon's plan in full swing, Israel had invaded Lebanon, occupied Beirut and steeped itself in the unpredictable currents of the Lebanese civil war. Israel maintained a troop presence in Lebanon until last May, when it unilaterally withdrew from a nine-mile-wide security zone in the south of the country.
During his campaign in Lebanon, Sharon made what many called the mistake of his career.
Shocked by the 1982 assassination of Lebanon's Christian president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, Sharon allowed Christian Phalangist militiamen bent on revenge against those they blamed for the killing to enter two Palestinian refugee camps. By the time the Phalangists were through, the bodies of at least 800 Palestinian men, women and children lay strewn across the camps.
Five months later, an Israeli commission of inquiry found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre and recommended removing him from his post as defense minister. Sharon at first refused to resign. As public pressure mounted, he agreed to quit the post but remained in the Cabinet as a minister without portfolio.
The massacres at the Sabra and Chatilla camps damaged Sharon's reputation but never completely sidelined him from Israeli politics. He served in successive governments as minister of housing, infrastructure, trade and, finally, under Benjamin Netanyahu, foreign affairs.
But the stigma of the Lebanese massacre stayed with him.
"He believes that by power and by force, he can take whatever he wants, that might is right," Shulamit Aloni, the retired leader of the left-wing Meretz party, said last week.
"He and his (allies) believe the army can solve everything. All of them are armed. All of them think they can hear the voice of God," said Aloni, one of Sharon's most outspoken critics. "They have no respect for what democracy stands for and no respect for human rights."
Aware that his political foes accuse him of extremism, Sharon has taken the offensive on the campaign trail, deriding Barak for his willingness to make sweeping concessions to the Palestinians in return for peace.
"This government is acting like we were defeated. It humiliates itself. It negotiates while there is violence and terror," Sharon told 500 supporters at a campaign stop last week.
"Barak's people say I will bring war. This is not true," he said. "Only a strong man can bring peace."
The question now on the lips of many Israelis is whether Sharon, as prime minister, would follow the trajectory of his hawkish career or forge ahead with efforts to make peace with the Palestinians at a critical juncture in negotiations.
Last month, he sent his son and two officials from his Likud Party to Vienna, Austria, to meet with a top Palestinian adviser. The unexpected move sent a strong signal that Sharon was willing to do business with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
But just how Sharon might deal with the Palestinians remains unclear.
Since becoming a candidate for prime minister in December, Sharon has avoided making incendiary statements and has declined requests for interviews with journalists, citing a busy campaign schedule. He has spent much of his time wooing voters with vague promises to bring peace.
But in statements made prior to his candidacy and published in the New Yorker magazine last month, he called Arafat a "murderer" and "liar" and stated flatly that peace with the Palestinians "cannot be achieved."
Sharon has pledged to limit the amount of West Bank territory controlled by Palestinians to the 42 percent they already rule. Barak's government reportedly has offered them as much as 95 percent of the West Bank, and Palestinians have rejected the number pushed by Sharon as unsatisfactory.
Few Israeli figures, in fact, are more reviled by Palestinians than Sharon. They blame him for igniting the Palestinian uprising at the end of September by visiting an elevated compound in Jerusalem's Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. An Israeli government report released last week disputed the Palestinian claim, saying that Sharon's visit, "however sensitive," was not the cause of the violence, which has claimed the lives of nearly 400 people, most of them Palestinians.
Arabs also remember Sharon as the man who in 1953 led an army raid against the West Bank village of Qibbya, then ruled by Jordan. Israeli soldiers blew up 50 houses, killing 69 men, women and children who had been hiding inside. Sharon later said he had thought the town was deserted.
Decades later, Sharon razed Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip so his soldiers could patrol wider and supposedly safer streets.
A large, lumbering man, Sharon has never been easily intimidated.
Historian Howard M. Sachar, author of A History of Israel, said Sharon once nearly punched a fellow Likud Party member during a political row and threatened to "strip naked" another colleague with whom he disagreed.
In the 1980s, he bought a large stone house in the middle of the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Sharon still owns the structure, which now is used as a base for soldiers. A giant menorah is perched on the roof, and a huge Israeli flag is draped down the side.
At about the same time, Sharon began aiding the Ateret Cohanim, a small group of religious Israelis who buy property in densely populated Arab areas of east Jerusalem and then move in Jewish settlers. Today, the group also owns property in Abu Dis, a village just outside Jerusalem often mentioned by negotiators as a possible site for a future Palestinian capital.
An outdoorsman who lives on a ranch in the Negev Desert, where he often wears a cowboy hat, Sharon has tried to convey a soft yet rugged image in his campaign ads. They show him strolling through wheat fields and carrying children, as gentle music plays. A woman's voice extols him as a "leader of peace."
Those who know him say the images reveal the real Sharon, whom they describe as a loyal friend and a loving father.
Sharon's wife, Lily, with whom he had two sons, died in March. Before her death, she was involved in his political activities, said Sharon's friend Kashriel.
"She knew every detail. She was with him everywhere," Kashriel said. "I think her death hurt him very much."
The campaign ads, Kashriel said, capture Sharon's physical strength. He recalled a time when he accompanied Sharon on a walk with aides in the Jordan Valley under a blazing desert sun. The younger men stopped to rest.
"He continued to walk," Kashriel said of Sharon. "Even though he is 72 and probably has high cholesterol - if you hesitate to eat the meat on your plate, he will take it and eat it - he's still healthy."
Called Arik by his friends, Sharon speaks Russian and plays the violin. In private gatherings, his supporters say, he has a well-developed sense of humor.
But in public life, he has cultivated an image of a man who refuses to be pushed around. That persona, analysts say, seems attractive to Israelis tired of violence and worried about the future.
Sixty-seven percent of Israeli Jews polled in an October survey published by the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth expressed concern that Israel would cease to exist in the years ahead. Many said they wanted to make peace with the Palestinians but considered the concessions that Barak had offered excessive and dangerous.
Analysts say many Israelis don't know whether they should support Barak's peace initiatives or give Sharon an opportunity to lead the country. As a result, pollsters predict that huge numbers of voters will stay home on Election Day.
Sharon's campaign managers say his lead could shrink as undecided voters make up their minds. But they remain confident that their candidate will win.
The prospect of Sharon leading the country has surprised many Israelis, who until recently had been convinced that he would never move far enough toward the political center to appeal to the general public.
Only months ago, analysts say, Sharon was seen by many Israelis as too old and too extreme to lead.
Now, disturbed by an uneasy feeling that the country is in danger, many voters seem ready to give Sharon a chance.
"Israelis have a growing sense of insecurity, of not knowing exactly where they are going," said Ben Simon, the Haaretz columnist. "They feel so helpless and in such an atmosphere, you need somebody unusual.
"People feel they have nothing to lose."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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