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Ariel Sharon
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' (also known by his diminutive Arik, ?????) (born Ariel Scheinermann (????? ???????) on 26 February 1928) is a former Israeli Prime Minister and military leader. Sharon served as Prime Minister from March 2001 until April 2006, though he was unable to carry out his duties after suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006, when he fell into a coma and entered a persistent vegetative state.
During his lengthy career, Sharon was a controversial figure among many factions, both inside and outside Israel.
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' (also known by his diminutive Arik, ?????) (born Ariel Scheinermann (????? ???????) on 26 February 1928) is a former Israeli Prime Minister and military leader. Sharon served as Prime Minister from March 2001 until April 2006, though he was unable to carry out his duties after suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006, when he fell into a coma and entered a persistent vegetative state.
During his lengthy career, Sharon was a controversial figure among many factions, both inside and outside Israel. The Israeli government established the Kahan Commission to investigate Sharon's involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and subsequently found he bore some responsibility for the entry of the Lebanese Phalangist militias into the Palestinian camp. Sharon resigned from the Defence Ministry, but remained in the cabinet as minister without portfolio.
During his tenure as Prime Minister, Sharon's policies caused a rift within the Likud Party, and he ultimately left Likud to form a new party called Kadima. He became the first Prime Minister of Israel who did not belong to either Labor or Likud (the two parties that have traditionally dominated Israeli politics). The new party created by Sharon, with Ehud Olmert having stepped in as its leader, after Sharon fell ill in the midst of election season, won the most Knesset seats in the 2006 elections, and is now the senior coalition partner in the Israeli government.
Early life
Ariel Sharon was born in Kfar Malal, then in the British Mandate of Palestine, to Litvish Jews Shmuel Sheinerman, of Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus) and Dvora (formerly Vera), of Mogilev.
His father was studying agronomy at the university of Tbilisi, Georgia (Georgian SSR) and his mother had just started her fourth year of medical studies when the couple married. They immigrated to the British Mandate Palestine from Russia, fleeing the Red Army. Sharon's father spoke Yiddish and his mother spoke Russian; their son learned to speak Russian as a young boy.
The family arrived in the Second Aliyah and settled in a socialist, secular community where, despite being Mapai supporters, they were known to be contrarians against the prevailing community consensus:
The Scheinermans' eventual ostracism... followed the 1933 Arlozorov murder when Dvora and Shmuel refused to endorse the Labor movement's anti-Revisionist calumny and participate in Bolshevic-style public revilement rallies, then the order of the day. Retribution was quick to come. They were expelled from the local health-fund clinic and village synagogue. The cooperative's truck wouldn't make deliveries to their farm nor collect produce.
Four years after their arrival at Kfar Malal, the Sheinermans had a daughter, Yehudit (Dita), and two years after, they had a son, Ariel.
At age 10, Sharon entered the Zionist youth movement Hassadeh (“the Field”).
In 1942 at the age of 14, Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, and later the Haganah, the underground paramilitary force and the Jewish military precursor to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Military career
From 1948 War to Suez Crisis
At the creation of Israel (and Haganah's transformation into the Israel Defense Forces), Sharon became a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade. He was severely wounded in the groin by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the first Battle of Latrun, an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the besieged Jewish community of Jerusalem. His injuries eventually healed.
In September 1949, Sharon was promoted to company commander (of the Golani Brigade's reconnaissance unit) and in 1950 to intelligence officer for Central Command. He then took leave to begin studies in history and Middle Eastern culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A year and a half later, he was asked to return to active service in the rank of major and as the leader of the new Unit 101, Israel's first special forces unit.
Unit 101 undertook a series of military raids against Palestinians and neighboring Arab states that helped bolster Israeli morale and fortify its deterrent image. The unit was known for targeting civilians, notably in the widely condemned Qibya massacre in the fall of 1953, in which 69 Palestinian civilians, some of them children, were killed by Sharon's troops in a reprisal attack on their West Bank village. In the documentary Israel and the Arabs: 50 Year War, Sharon recalls what happened after the raid, which was heavily condemned by many Western nations, including the U.S.:
I was summoned to see Ben-Gurion. It was the first time I met him, and right from the start Ben-Gurion said to me: "Let me first tell you one thing: it doesn't matter what the world says about Israel, it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive."
Shortly afterwards, just a few months after its founding, Unit 101 was merged into the 890 Paratroopers Brigade (Sharon eventually became the latter's commander), which continued to attack military and civilian targets, culminating with the attack on the Qalqilyah police station in the autumn of 1956.
In 1952-53, Sharon attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, taking History and Oriental studies.
Sharon has been widowed twice. Shortly after becoming a military instructor, he married his first wife, Margalit, with whom he had a son, Gur. Margalit died in a car accident in May 1962. Their son, Gur, died in October 1967 after a friend shot him while they were playing with a rifle. After Margalit's death, Sharon married her younger sister, Lily. They had two sons, Omri and Gil'ad. Lily Sharon died of cancer in 2000.
From 1958 to 1962, Sharon served as commander of an infantry brigade and studied law at Tel Aviv University.
Mitla incident
In the 1956 Suez War (the British "Operation Musketeer"), Sharon commanded Unit 202 (the Paratroopers Brigade), and was responsible for taking ground east of the Sinai's Mitla Pass and eventually taking the pass itself. Having successfully carried out the first part of his mission (joining a battalion parachuted near Mitla with the rest of the brigade moving on ground), Sharon's unit was deployed near the pass. Neither reconnaissance aircraft nor scouts reported enemy forces inside the Mitla Pass. Sharon, whose forces were initially heading east, away from the pass, reported to his superiors that he was increasingly concerned with the possibility of an enemy thrust through the pass, which could attack his brigade from the flank or the rear.
Sharon asked for permission to attack the pass several times, but his requests were denied, though he was allowed to check its status so that if the pass was empty, he could receive permission to take it later. Sharon sent a small scout force, which was met with heavy fire and became bogged down due to vehicle malfunction in the middle of the pass. Sharon ordered the rest of his troops to attack in order to aid their comrades. In the ensuing successful battle to capture the pass, 38 Israeli soldiers were killed.
Sharon was criticized by his superiors and he was damaged by allegations several years later made by several former subordinates, who claimed that Sharon tried to provoke the Egyptians and sent out the scouts in bad faith, ensuring that a battle would ensue. Deliberate or not, the attack was considered strategically reckless because the Egyptian forces were expected to withdraw from the pass within a day or two.
Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War
The Mitla incident hindered Sharon's military career for several years. In the meantime, he occupied the position of an infantry brigade commander and received a law degree from Tel Aviv University. When Yitzhak Rabin (who within a few years became associated with the Labor Party) became Chief of Staff in 1964, however, Sharon began again to rise rapidly in the ranks, occupying the positions of Infantry School Commander and Head of Army Training Branch, eventually achieving the rank of Aluf (Major General). In the 1967 Six-Day War, Sharon commanded the most powerful armored division on the Sinai front which made a breakthrough in the Kusseima-Abu-Ageila fortified area (see Battle of Abu-Ageila). In 1969, he was appointed the Head of IDF's Southern Command. He had no further promotions before retiring in August 1973. Soon after, he joined the Likud ("Unity") political party.
At the start of the Yom Kippur War on 6 October 1973, Sharon was called back to active duty along with his assigned reserve armored division. His forces did not engage the Egyptian Army immediately, despite his requests. Under cover of darkness Sharon's forces moved to a point on the Suez Canal that had been prepared before the war. Bridging equipment was thrown across the canal on 17 October. The bridgehead was between two Egyptian Armies. He then headed north towards Ismailia, intent on cutting the Egyptian second army's supply lines, but his division was halted south of the Fresh Water Canal.
Abraham Adan's division (Bren) passed over the bridgehead into Africa advancing to within 101 kilometers of Cairo. His division managed to encircle Suez, cutting off and encircling the Third Army, but did not force its surrender before the ceasefire. Tensions between the two generals followed Sharon's decision, but a military tribunal later found his action was militarily effective. This move was regarded by many Israelis as the turning point of the war in the Sinai front. Thus, Sharon is widely viewed as a war hero who saved Israel from defeat in Sinai. A photo of Sharon wearing a head bandage on the Suez Canal became a famous symbol of Israeli military prowess.
Sharon's aggressive political positions were controversial and he was relieved of duty in February 1974.
Early political career
Beginnings of political career
In the 1940s and 1950s, Sharon seemed to be personally devoted to the ideals of Mapai, the predecessor of the modern Labor Party. However, after retiring from military service, he was instrumental in establishing Likud in July 1973 by a merger of Herut, the Liberal Party and independent elements. Sharon became chairman of the campaign staff for that year's elections, which were scheduled for November. Two and a half weeks after the start of the election campaign, the Yom Kippur War erupted and Sharon was called back to reserve service. In the elections Sharon won a seat, but a year later he resigned.
From June 1975 to March 1976, Sharon was a special aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He planned his return to politics for the 1977 elections; first he tried to return to the Likud and replace Menachem Begin at the head of the party. He suggested to Simha Erlich, who headed the Liberal Party bloc in the Likud, that he was more fitting than Begin to win an election victory; he was rejected, however. He then tried to join the Labor Party and the centrist Democratic Movement for Change, but was rejected by those parties too. Only then did he form his own list, Shlomtzion, which won two Knesset seats in the subsequent elections. Immediately after the elections he merged Shlomtzion with the Likud and became Minister of Agriculture.
When Sharon joined Begin's government he had relatively little political experience. During this period, Sharon supported the Gush Emunim settlements movement and was viewed as the patron of the settlers' movement. He used his position to encourage the establishment of a network of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to prevent the possibility of Palestinian Arabs' return of these territories. Sharon doubled the number of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip during his tenure.
On his settlement policy, Sharon said while addressing a meeting of the Tzomet party: "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Judean) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."
After the 1981 elections, Begin rewarded Sharon for his important contribution to Likud's narrow win, by appointing him Minister of Defense. On 16 January 1982 US President Ronald Reagan, in his diary, said that Sharon was "the bad guy who seemingly looks forward to a war."
Sabra and Shatila massacre
During the 1982 Lebanon War, while Sharon was Defence Minister, the Sabra and Shatila massacre took place, in which between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps were killed by the Phalanges—Lebanese Maronite Christian militias. The Security Chief of the Phalange militia, a Lebanese himself, Elie Hobeika, was the ground commander of the militiamen who entered the Palestinian camps and killed the Palestinians. The Phalange had been sent into the camps to clear out PLO fighters while Israeli forces surrounded the camps and provided them with some logistical support and guarded camp exits. The incident led some of Sharon's critics to refer to him as "the Butcher of Beirut".
An Associated Press report on 15 September 1982 stated:
- Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, in a statement, tied the killing [of the Phalangist leader Gemayel] to the PLO, saying: "It symbolises the terrorist murderousness of the PLO terrorist organisations and their supporters." Habib Chartouni, a Lebanese Christian from the Syrian Socialist National Party confessed to the murder of Gemayel, and no Palestinians were involved. Sharon had used this to instigate the entrance of the Lebanese militias into the camps.
The Kahan Commission found the Israeli Defence Forces indirectly responsible for the massacre and charged Sharon with "personal responsibility." It recommended in early 1983 the removal of Sharon from his post as Defense minister. In their recommendations and closing remarks, the commission stated:
- We have found, as has been detailed in this report, that the Minister of Defense [Ariel Sharon] bears personal responsibility. In our opinion, it is fitting that the Minister of Defense draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office - and if necessary, that the Prime Minister consider whether he should exercise his authority under Section 21-A(a) of the Basic Law: the Government, according to which "the Prime Minister may, after informing the Cabinet of his intention to do so, remove a minister from office."
Sharon initially refused to resign as Defense Minister, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin initially refused to fire him. After a grenade was tossed into a dispersing crowd of an Israeli Peace Now march, killing Emil Grunzweig and injuring 10 others, a compromise was reached: Sharon agreed to forfeit the post of Defense Minister but stayed in the cabinet as a Minister without Portfolio. Ariel Sharon's removal as Defense Minister is listed as one of the important events of the .
In its 21 February 1983 issue, Time published a story implying Sharon was directly responsible for the massacres. Sharon sued Time for libel in American and Israeli courts. Although the jury concluded that the Time story included false allegations, they found that Time had not acted with "actual malice" and did not award any damages.
On 18 June 2001 relatives of the victims of the Sabra massacre began proceedings in Belgium to have Sharon indicted on war crimes charges. In June 2002, a Brussels Appeals Court rejected the lawsuit because the law was subsequently changed to disallow such lawsuits unless a Belgian citizen is involved.
Political downturn and recovery
After being dismissed from the Defense Minister post because the Kahan Commission found him "personally responsible" for his "disregard of the danger of a massacre," Sharon remained in successive governments as a Minister without Portfolio (1983—1984), Minister for Trade and Industry (1984—1990), and Minister of Housing Construction (1990—1992). In the Knesset, he was member of the Foreign Affairs and Defence committee from (1990-1992) and Chairman of the committee overseeing Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union. During this period he was a rival to then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, but failed in various bids to replace him as chairman of Likud. Their rivalry reached a head on the "Night of Microphones" in February 1990, when Sharon snapped the microphone from Shamir, who was addressing the Likud central committee, and famously exclaimed: "Who's for wiping out terrorism?" The incident was widely viewed as an apparent coup attempt against Shamir's leadership of the party.
In Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996–1999 government, Sharon was Minister of National Infrastructure (1996—1998), and Foreign Minister (1998—1999). Upon the election of the Barak Labor government, Sharon became leader of the Likud party.
Campaign for Prime Minister, 2000-01
On 28 September 2000, Sharon and an escort of over 1,000 Israeli police officers visited the Temple Mount complex, site of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, the holiest place in the world to Jews and the third holiest site in Islam. Sharon declared that the complex would remain under perpetual Israeli control. Palestinian commentators accused Sharon of purposely inflaming emotions with the event to provoke a violent response and obstruct success of delicate ongoing peace talks. On the following day, a large number of Palestinian demonstrators and an Israeli police contingent confronted each other at the site. According to the U.S. State Department, “Palestinians held large demonstrations and threw stones at police in the vicinity of the Western Wall. Police used rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, killing 4 persons and injuring about 200.” According to the GOI, 14 policemen were injured.
Sharon's visit, a few months before his election as Prime Minister, came after archeologists claimed that extensive building operations at the site were destroying priceless antiquities. Sharon's supporters point out that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority planned the intifada months prior to Sharon's visit. They state that Palestinian security chief Jabril Rajoub provided assurances that if Sharon did not enter the mosques, no problems would arise. They also often quote statements by Palestinian Authority officials, particularly Imad Falouji, the P.A. Communications Minister, who admitted months after Sharon's visit that the violence had been planned in July, far in advance of Sharon's visit, stating the intifada "was carefully planned since the return of (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat from Camp David negotiations rejecting the U.S. conditions". According to the Mitchell Report, :the government of Israel asserted that the immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on 25 July 2000 and the “widespread appreciation in the international community of Palestinian responsibility for the impasse.” In this view, Palestinian violence was planned by the PA leadership, and was aimed at “provoking and incurring Palestinian casualties as a means of regaining the diplomatic initiative.”
The Mitchell Report found that
- the Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada. But it was poorly timed and the provocative effect should have been foreseen; indeed, it was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited. More significant were the events that followed: The decision of the Israeli police on 29 September to use lethal means against the Palestinian demonstrators.
In addition, the report stated,
- Accordingly, we have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity; or to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the GOI to respond with lethal force.
The Or Commission, an Israeli panel of inquiry appointed to investigate the October 2000 events,
- criticised the Israeli police for being unprepared for the riots and possibly using excessive force to disperse the mobs, resulting in the deaths of 12 Arab Israeli, one Jewish and one Palestinian citizens.
Palestinians doubt the existence of popular support for Sharon's actions. Polls published in the media, as well as the 140% call-up of reservists (as opposed to the 60% in regular periods) seem to indicate that the Israeli public is quite supportive of Sharon's policies. A survey conducted by Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center in May 2004 found that 80% of Jewish Israelis believe that the Israel Defense Forces have succeeded in militarily countering the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
Prime Minister
After the collapse of Barak's government, Sharon was elected Prime Minister in February 2001.
On 20 July 2004, Sharon called on French Jews to emigrate from France to Israel immediately, in light of an increase in French anti-Semitism (94 anti-Semitic assaults reported in the first six months of 2004 compared to 47 in 2003). France has the fourth largest Jewish population (about 600,000 people), after the United States, Israel, and Russia. Sharon observed that an "unfettered anti-Semitism" reigned in France. The French government responded by describing his comments as "unacceptable", as did the French representative Jewish organization CRIF, which denied Sharon's claim of intense anti-Semitism in French society. An Israeli spokesperson later claimed that Sharon had been misunderstood. France then postponed a visit by Sharon. Upon his visit, both Sharon and French President Jacques Chirac were described as showing a willingness to put the issue behind them.
Unilateral disengagement
In May 2003, Sharon endorsed the Road Map for Peace put forth by the United States, European Union, and Russia, which opened a dialogue with Mahmud Abbas, and announced his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state in the future.
He has embarked on a course of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while maintaining control of its coastline and airspace. Sharon's plan has been welcomed by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel's left wing as a step towards a final peace settlement. However, it has been greeted with opposition from within his own Likud party and from other right wing Israelis, on national security, military, and religious grounds.
Detractors of withdrawal plan
Detractors have publicly distrusted Sharon's motives for this plan, and their suspicions were further roused after publication of an interview with top Sharon aide Dov Weisglass in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 8 October 2004, in which he explained Israel's motivation for withdrawing from Gaza. He told the newspaper:
- "Palestinian terrorism must end before a political process leading to a Palestinian state begins. Otherwise, the result would be a Palestinian state with terrorism. ... The Gaza withdrawal would allow Israel to delay negotiations, and a Palestinian state, until such time that their leadership abandons violence. The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
Disengagement from Gaza
On 1 December 2004, Sharon dismissed five ministers from the Shinui party for voting against the government's 2005 budget. In January 2005 Sharon formed a national unity government that included representatives of Likud, Labor, and Meimad and Degel HaTorah as "out-of-government" supporters without any seats in the government (United Torah Judaism parties usually reject having ministerial offices as a policy). Between 16 and 30 August 2005, Sharon controversially expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank. Once it became clear that the evictions were definitely going ahead a group of conservative Rabbis, led by Rabbi Yosef Dayan, placed an ancient curse on him known as the Pulsa diNura, calling on the Angel of Death to intervene and kill him. After Israeli soldiers bulldozed every settlement structure except for several former synagogues, Israeli soldiers formally left Gaza on 11 September 2005 and closed the border fence at Kissufim. While his decision to withdraw from Gaza sparked bitter protests from members of the Likud party and the settler movement, opinion polls showed that it was a popular move among most of the Israeli electorate. On 27 September 2005, Sharon narrowly defeated a leadership challenge by a 52-48 percent vote. The move was initiated within the central committee of the governing Likud party by Sharon's main rival, Binyamin Netanyahu, who had left the cabinet to protest Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. The measure was an attempt by Netanyahu to call an early primary in November 2005 to choose the party's leader.
Founding of Kadima
On 21 November 2005, Sharon resigned as head of Likud, and dissolved parliament to form a new centrist party called Kadima ("Forward"). November polls indicated that Sharon was likely to be returned to the prime ministership. On 20 December 2005, Sharon's longtime rival Benjamin Netanyahu was elected his successor as leader of Likud. Following Sharon's incapacitation, Ehud Olmert replaced Sharon as Kadima's leader, for the nearing general elections. Netanyahu, along with Labor's Amir Peretz, were Kadimas chief rivals in the March 2006 elections.
In the elections, which saw Israel's lowest-ever voter turnout of 75% (the number usually averages on the high 90%), Kadima, headed by Olmert, received the most Knesset seats, followed by Labor. The new governing coalition installed in May 2006 includes Kadima, with Olmert as Prime Minister, Labor (including Peretz as Defense Minster), the Gil (Pensioner's) Party, the Shas religious party, and Yisrael Beiteinu.
Incapacitation and end of political career
Sharon was hospitalized on 18 December 2005, after suffering a minor ischemic stroke. Sharon often joked about his own weight; in October 2004 when asked why he did not wear a ballistic vest despite frequent death threats, Sharon smiled and replied, "There is none that fits my size". While this obesity in itself would not necessarily lead to a stroke, the associated conditions, such as high cholesterol, could. During his hospital stay, doctors discovered a heart ailment requiring surgery and ordered bed rest pending a cardiac catheterization scheduled for 5 January 2006. Instead, Sharon returned immediately to work and suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on 4 January, the day before surgery. After two surgeries lasting 7 and 14 hours, doctors stopped the bleeding in Sharon's brain, but were unable to prevent him from entering into a coma. Subsequent media reports indicated that Sharon had been diagnosed with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) during his December hospitalisation. Hadassah Hospital Director Shlomo Mor-Yosef declined to respond to comments that the combination of CAA and blood thinners after Sharon's December stroke may have caused his more serious subsequent stroke.
Ehud Olmert became Acting Prime Minister the night of Sharon's second stroke, while Sharon was only officially in office. Knesset elections followed in March, with Olmert and Sharon's Kadima party winning a plurality. The next month, the Israeli Cabinet declared Sharon permanently incapacitated and Olmert officially became Interim Prime Minister in office on 14 April 2006 until his new established government made him Prime Minister in his own right on 4 May.
Sharon has undergone a series of subsequent surgeries related to his comatose state. He has remained in a long-term care facility since 6 November 2006. Medical experts indicate that his cognitive abilities have likely been destroyed by the stroke. He is in a persistent vegetative state with extremely low chances of recovery. On 27th Feb 2009 he turned 81, still comatose but in a stable condition.
See also
External links
- (16-18 September 1982)
- - An authentic recording of Ariel Sharon talking to a soldier positioned at one of the Suez Channel bunkers at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War.
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