Former Israeli Leader Ariel Sharon Dies
85-Year-Old's Career Spanned Country's History
Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was a tough, effective military commander before going on to a controversial career in government. We look at three key junctures that will help define his legacy, via The Foreign Bureau. (Photo: Getty)
Former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, who through his long career was a renowned warrior, champion of Jewish settlements and, eventually, an advocate of a more conciliatory approach toward Palestinians, died Saturday, Israeli media reported.
Mr. Sharon's career spanned the history of Israel from its establishment in 1948. As a soldier, he commanded troops in every major conflict through the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when he encircled Egypt's Third Army in the Sinai and was hailed at home as the "King of Israel."
In subsequent years, he was a senior member of the Likud Party and served in numerous cabinet posts. Among them, he was minister of defense during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, an episode that left him tarred by a government commission that blamed him for failing to prevent the killing of a large number of Palestinian and other civilians in what became known as the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
In 2001, Mr. Sharon staged a political comeback when he became prime minister at a time of escalating terrorist violence. As prime minister, he initiated construction of a controversial barrier along the West Bank to protect Israel from incursions.
Then, in 2004, the longtime hawk rocked Israeli politics when he changed course to favor unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. In 2005, the Knesset approved his disengagement plan to withdraw troops and citizens from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.
The uproar within Likud following the withdrawal led Mr. Sharon to resign and form a new party, Kadima, that dominated the Knesset for most of the rest of the decade.
Only months after the historic Gaza pullback was completed and amid a 2006 election, Mr. Sharon suffered a stroke that left him in a permanent coma, ending his career and stoking renewed political turmoil.
Ariel Sharon was born at Kfar Malal, a cooperative Jewish farming settlement in the British Mandate of Palestine, outside Tel Aviv. His parents, originally named Scheinerman, were Zionists who emigrated from Russia at the end of World War I.
Arik, as he was known, learned to fight as a child, helping defend his family's farm from Bedouins and other neighboring Arabs. Because it was illegal for settlers to own firearms, he had the job of hiding the family rifle when British troops patrolled the neighborhood.
He joined the Haganah, the underground military movement, in high school, then enrolled in officer training school. Mr. Sharon was 20 when he commanded an infantry company during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. During the Battle of Latrun, a strategic hilltop between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, his unit was pinned down under hostile fire from Jordanian forces and sustained heavy losses. Mr. Sharon was seriously wounded.
Mr. Sharon had a reputation as a swashbuckler, sometimes leading men into battle in an armored car stocked with gourmet cheese and sausages. On several occasions, he was accused of exceeding orders and of atrocities, but he was regularly promoted.
After the 1948 war, he battled cross-border raiders in the early 1950s. He led the capture of the strategic Mitla Pass in the 1956 Sinai war with Egypt.
In 1967, months before that year's Arab-Israeli war, he was elevated to the rank of major general, and subsequently won a victory over Egyptian troops in the Battle of Abu-Ageila, helping seal Israel's capture of the Sinai Peninsula.
When Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel in 1973, Mr. Sharon had already left the military, but he returned to the front line as a reserve general and led his troops across the Suez Canal, turning the tide against Egyptian forces and cementing his reputation for military prowess.
Mr. Sharon retired after a cease-fire was negotiated, and turned to politics, winning a seat in the Knesset in 1977. He served as agriculture minister and helped draft plans for scaled-up settlements on the West Bank.
In 1982, after the massacres in Lebanon, Mr. Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister when the Kahan Commission found that Israel's army, stationed around two Palestinian refugee camps, knew Christian militants were slaughtering residents of the refugee camps but did nothing to stop it.
After Israel's government stopped establishing new settlements in the 1990s, he encouraged Jewish settlers to set up improvised hilltop settlement outposts, whose watchtowers and crude lodgings gave them the appearance of military bases.
Mr. Sharon's visit in 2000 to the Temple Mount, accompanied by a contingent of armed police, marked the start of a period of swirling Palestinian violence known as the second Intifada. Mr. Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001, defeating incumbent Ehud Barak by a landslide amid disillusionment with Mr. Barak's handling of failed peace talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
A year after his election, as suicide bombings on buses and at restaurants escalated, Mr. Sharon ordered the army into Palestinian cities in the West Bank. He directed plans for a permanent barrier in the West Bank; that wall is credited by some with helping stop the wave of suicide bombings by Palestinians in Israeli cities. Mr. Arafat was besieged in his compound in Ramallah, in the West Bank, where he remained isolated until illness overtook him, and he died in 2004.
While battling militants, Mr. Sharon also decided it would be necessary for Israel to uproot settlements and pull back from Gaza and the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state and avoid creating a binational state.
"He began seeing things in a less dogmatic way'' as prime minister, said David Landau, whose biography, "Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon," will be published this month.
Mr. Sharon faced a police investigation during his premiership into allegations he was involved in influence peddling. However, Israel's attorney general decided to close the case without an indictment. Mr. Sharon's son, Omri, was convicted and sent to jail in a corruption scandal.
Mr. Sharon left behind a reconfigured Israeli politics when he exited the stage after suffering a stroke. Mr. Sharon's deputy, Ehud Olmert, ended up becoming Kadima's first prime minister.
Mr. Sharon sometimes said his ambition was to retire and farm like his ancestors, and he liked to be photographed seated on his tractor, plowing crops of wheat and cotton, a seeming Cincinnatus.
Early in 2013, his doctors announced that tests had shown that despite remaining in a coma, Mr. Sharon showed significant brain activity. But he never regained consciousness.