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INDEPTH: MIDDLE EAST
Ariel Sharon - A profile of "The Bulldozer"
CBC News Online | Jan. 5, 2006
In the Israeli press, Ariel Sharon was often called "The Bulldozer" – a reference to a no-holds-barred style of aggressive leadership that marked his long career in Israel's military and in its politics.
To call him controversial and divisive almost underplays the depth of emotion the man aroused from various stakeholders in the volatile world of Middle East politics – an old soldier who was both revered and reviled for actions that shaped the modern Israel. For most of his life, compromise and negotiation were simply not part of his vocabulary; belligerent unilateralism was the norm.
It's been said that Sharon was born a soldier. As a teenager, he was active in the
underground resistance movement. On the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, he became a platoon commander in the newly created Israeli Defence Forces. Five years later, he led a special commando unit that carried out retaliatory attacks against Arab targets, including a controversial raid on a West Bank village that left dozens of civilians dead.
He commanded an armoured vision in the Sinai during the Six-Day War of 1967 and by 1969, he was heading the IDF's southern command. He retired from the military in 1973 and was elected to Israel's parliament as a member of the right-wing Likud, a party he helped to found. But he rejoined the army on the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. He commanded a reserve armoured unit that carried out a daring mission across the Suez Canal that some credited with assuring Israel's victory.
Following the war, Sharon returned to political life. He was re-elected in 1977 and
Prime Minister Menachem Begin appointed him agriculture minister. It was during this time that Sharon pushed for the establishment of dozens of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank. He viewed these Jewish settlements as the best way of ensuring that the lands that Israel took over in the 1967 war would never again fall under Palestinian control.
It was Sharon's appointment as defence minister in 1981 that eventually led to an incident that attracted worldwide condemnation. In 1982, he led Israeli forces in an ill-fated invasion of Lebanon, forcing PLO chief Yasser Arafat into exile. Lebanese Christian militia loyal to Israel entered the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps in Beirut and massacred hundreds of Palestinian civilians. The camps were under Israeli control. A commission of inquiry found that Sharon bore indirect responsibility for the massacres and Begin fired him as defence minister.
Sharon held a variety of cabinet posts in subsequent governments, sparring with Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the late 1980s. But he was not to assume the chairmanship of the Likud Party for another decade.
In September 2000, Sharon – then the Likud opposition leader – paid a visit to the Jerusalem site known as the Temple Mount in Judaism and Haram al-Sharif in Islam. He said it was meant as a peaceful gesture, but others viewed Sharon's visit, along with his hundreds of armed escorts, as a provocation. Sharon made it clear that he felt Israelis needed no special permission to visit a site that "is under full Israeli sovereignty." Violent protests followed. Some said it was that visit that sparked the second intifada, a view Sharon rejected. Responsibility for the intifiada, he said, lay solely with the Palestinian Authority leadership.
The bloody intifada campaign weakened Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Sharon openly accused Barak of being willing to give up control of Jerusalem to restore peace. In the elections of February 2001, Sharon was elected prime minister on a campaign promise to win "security and true peace."
After a spate of horrific Palestinian suicide-bomb attacks, Sharon's government approved the construction of a controversial barrier in the West Bank to keep would-be attackers away from Israeli civilians. "We need to build a fence in places where we know it is integral for Israel's security," Sharon said in a 2003 Jerusalem Post interview. He brushed off international criticism. In his view, he was simply ensuring Israel's security from a persistent Palestinian extremist threat.
In 2002, Israel twice laid siege to Yasser Arafat's West Bank compound, with Sharon accusing his longtime nemesis of fomenting violence. The following year, Sharon declared Arafat an enemy of Israel. In 2003, Sharon and U.S. President George Bush hold a Mideast summit – the first to exclude Arafat. The U.S.-brokered “road map to peace” plan officially launched at the summit calls for the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state and an end to the violence.
In 2004, his political career took a stunningly different turn. The father of Israel's settlement movement proposed the unilateral withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip. Editorials accused him of trying to curry favour with the left. Likud Party members fiercely rejected his plan. But others said Sharon's real end goal was to ensure that
Israel would never have to move the majority of Jewish settlers who'd moved to the West Bank.
Whatever the reason, Sharon prevailed in the end. In the summer of 2005, the Gaza settlements were dismantled and the settlers forcibly removed. Polls showed the withdrawal plan was supported by a majority of Israeli citizens.
Then, Sharon dropped another political bombshell. In November 2005, he quit the Likud Party he'd helped to start 30 years earlier to form a centrist party, Kadima. Sharon had concluded that
he would never be able to persuade his Likud colleagues to support peace concessions. The move triggered early elections.
But a massive stroke in January 2006 put an end to his campaign for a third term.
This was one fight the old soldier wouldn't win. The Ariel Sharon era was over.
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