A semi-tribute to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

I’ll admit it: I like Arial Sharon and believe that history will show him as one of Israel’s greatest leaders. Long derided by the left as being a war criminal and starting the second intifada, Sharon has proven to be effective, pragmatic, and indeed, brave. As it was once said that only Nixon could go to China, I truely believe that only Sharon can end this conflict (if indeed, anyone can at all).

I also believe that his decision to leave the Likud Party and form his own party for 2006 (which was the catalyst that prompted me to write this post) is appropriate and wise. Sharon is that combination of hard-line nationalist and realpolitik pragmatist that currently has no place in any of the major Israeli parties and belongs to a category of its own. Were I able, I would certainly cast my vote for him in 2006.

It might sound odd that a liberal American Democrat would say such things about a right-wing Israeli politician, particularly one with Sharon’s history.

Sharon is a native of the land he now governs and as a young man he joined the Jewish underground organisation Haganah, and fought in the Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49. Since then, he has fought in virtually every war Israel ever fought, eventually joining the new Likud Party shortly before the Yom Kipper war.

Sharon’s harshest critics (and at least one Dcat reader) call him a war criminal for the massacres at Sabra and Shatila during the 1982 Lebanon war. The reality of course, as it often is in the region, is not quite so simple. The Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia actually committed the massacre (although like all non-Jews in the region, they are accorded virtually zero blame by Israel-critics for the crime). Israeli troops allowed the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila to root out terrorist cells believed located there. It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years, and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition. Because of the incident, Sharon was fired as Defense Minister and publicly branded by an Israeli commission set up to investigate the incident, as indirectly culpable for the crime for not anticipating the Phalangist’s actions. Although I have no sympathy for Sharon's actions and take pride that while the Arab world was silent on the massacre, an estimated 300,000 Israelis demonstrated in protest, the scene of absolute chaos, anarchy and routine death and destruction as described by Thomas Friedman is always missing in the narrative.

Critics also (falsely) accuse Sharon for starting the second intifada by visiting the Templ Mount (something neither uncommon nor illegal for Jews to do), despite the fact that the PA’s own Communications Minister, Imad Faluji, admitted that the violence had been planned in July, far in advance of Sharon's visit. According to him, the intifada “had been planned since Chairman Arafat's return from Camp David, when he turned the tables on the former U.S. president and rejected the American conditions” and the “Mitchell Report,” which studied the incident in 2001, concluded bluntly, “The Sharon visit did not cause the ‘Al-Aksa Intifada.” Furthermore, Palestinian security chief Jabril Rajoub assured Sharon that so long as he did not enter the mosques (which he did not), no problems would arise.

Perhaps the most accurate charge that critics make is that he is considered the “father” of the settler movement, creating many of the problems that now fuel Palestinian rage. As housing minister in the early 1990s, he presided over the biggest building drive in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza since Israel occupied the territories in 1967.

Judged for a lifetime, Sharon may not get very high marks, even if most of the extreme charges are exaggerated or simply untrue. Nevertheless, as Prime Minister of Israel, Sharon became committed to making progress, with or without the Palestinians help. During his tenure, he is responsible for the following:

• When terrorists continued to attack innocent civilians inside Israel, he built a defensive barrier which all but ended Palestinian terrorism (click here for Israel's defense of the barrier at the UN).
  
• He authorized the assassination of so many Hamas leaders, the terrorist organization began keeping the names of their new leaders secret in fear of being killed.
  
• Sharon’s refusal to deal with Yassir Arafat forced the Palestinians into reforming their political machine and prompted the creation of a Palestinian Prime Minister, the first person other than Arafat to ever have any say in the future of the Palestinian people.
  
• Finally, most recently, and perhaps most importantly, Sharon put his life and political future on the line by withdrawing all settlements in Gaza

That Sharon did not due these things because he wants the Palestinians to be free and happy does not diminish for me the power of his actions. He did those things because he knows that any future with the Palestinians will be a future without Gaza and thus keeping it adds unnecessary danger to Israeli security. In time, if the Palestinians are unable to control their own people or if civil war erupts, it is likely that Sharon will withdraw from more settlements in the West Bank, probably incorporating some of the largest Jewish settlements into Israel, leaving the rest, and preparing to live with insecurity and instability at its borders indefinitely from a defendable and fortified position.

In 2005, Sharon delivered a speech before the UN General Assembly, the same body that once declared the very idea of a Jewish state to be racist: In it he said the following:

“I was born in the Land of Israel, the son of pioneers -- people who tilled the land and sought no fights -- who did not come to Israel to dispossess its residents. If the circumstances had not demanded it, I would not have become a soldier, but rather a farmer and agriculturist. My first love was, and remains, manual labor; sowing and harvesting, the pastures, the flock and the cattle.

I, as someone whose path of life led him to be a fighter and commander in all Israel's wars, reaches out today to our Palestinian neighbors in a call for reconciliation and compromise to end the bloody conflict, and embark on the path which leads to peace and understanding between our peoples. I view this as my calling and my primary mission for the coming years."

Later, he noted that "The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel does not mean disregarding the rights of others in the land. The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them, and have no aspirations to rule over them. They are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own.

This week, the last Israeli soldier left the Gaza Strip, and military law there was ended. The State of Israel proved that it is ready to make painful concessions in order to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. The decision to disengage was very difficult for me, and involves a heavy personal price. However, it is the absolute recognition that it is the right path for the future of Israel that guided me. Israeli society is undergoing a difficult crisis as a result of the Disengagement, and now needs to heal the rifts."

I am sure there are many who disagree with what I have said here, and I respect other, less flattering views of the man, but to me, these are the frank words of a leader. For the sake of Israel's and the Palestinian's futures, I wish him all the best with his new (as yet unnamed) party.