Rael Jean Isaac

If Ariel Sharon had retired to his ranch in 2000, he would have gone down in Jewish history as a great leader and a man emblematic of modern Israel: the brave general who crossed the Suez Canal in the Yom Kippur War to snatch victory from the jaws of a looming defeat; the pioneering politician who created the Likud bloc, which ended the dominance of Labor as the unchallenged ruling party of Israel; the Minister of Defense who, in a noble if failed effort, sought to drive Syria and the PLO from Lebanon, freeing that country while securing Israel’s northern border; the passionate critic of the Oslo agreements, who foretold, while euphoria still gripped Israel and the Jewish world, their disastrous consequences. Strikingly, Sharon, like reborn Israel, excelled in the two areas Jews in the Diaspora period were thought most deficient: in war and agriculture.

But his accomplishments will be overshadowed by his failures as Prime Minister, his arbitrary uprooting of flourishing Jewish communities, the damage he did to democratic processes, his announced intention, had he been reelected, to continue headlong on this same destructive path.

Ironically, no group was better pleased than members of Americans for a Safe Israel when in February 2001 Sharon, with the largest margin ever in Israeli politics, swept to victory over Ehud Barak, whose massive concessions to Arab demands merely produced a renewed Arab onslaught. When Sharon, in his inaugural speech said “Since my youth I have devoted myself entirely to the country, to consolidating and building its security” we felt there was truth in these simple words. Here was the man who had done more than any single individual to build and strengthen the Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Here was the man who had denounced the idea of Israel retreating behind a wall (first proposed by Labor in 1995) saying: “Won’t these fences be sabotaged? Won’t they be penetrated? It is difficult to fathom such silliness.” Here was the man who had said of a Palestinian state: “In Western Eretz Yisrael or part of it, a second Palestinian state shall not arise, not even a corridor to such a state in one or another form of self-government.”

True, from the beginning we saw worrying signs. In the run-up to the election campaign we noted (Outpost, Feb. 2001) that his campaign slogan “Only Sharon Can Bring Peace” and his speeches around the country promising “we will be able to reach peace—but true peace” were a sign that Sharon accepted “the conventional wisdom that the Israeli public will only vote for a leader who feeds their addiction to the infantile cotton candy of ‘peace’.” Had he been forthright, saying he could promise only to increase security, for peace depended on a radical change in Arab attitudes, we said he would still have been elected and “might actually have a chance to govern free of the worst curse of all – a dishonestly promised peace.”

We were deeply disturbed by much that happened in Sharon’s first term in office. To our horror, Sharon not only chose to govern through an alliance with Labor, but installed as Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the architect of the Oslo agreements, though Sharon termed Oslo “the deepest mistake that any government has done.” He even wanted to make Ehud Barak Defense Minister – Barak, whose offer to return Israel to the borders of 1949 and accept a substantial number of “Palestinian refugees” to boot -- had merely inspired Arafat to launch a new Intifada. (Sharon had to settle for Benjamin Ben Eliezer when the Labor Party itself repudiated Barak.) Although the cabinet was the largest in Israel’s history, the only active body was a mini-security cabinet consisting of Sharon and the two Labor Ministers, Peres and Ben Eliezer. As we noted at the time, the operations of the government were ludicrous, with Foreign Minister Peres going his own way, repeatedly contradicting Sharon’s announced policies without so much as a rebuke. (Peres declared, in a Washington press conference: “I don’t deny that the government has two views and eventually two voices.”) In an article entitled “Yes, Prime Minister Peres” (Outpost, June-July 2001) this writer argued that Peres was the real Prime Minister, “having consolidated his power over a hapless Ariel Sharon through the political maneuvering for which he is justly famous.” In retrospect this was wrong: in fact, Peres served Sharon’s purposes perfectly, setting the government’s course to the left while allowing Sharon, seemingly unable to control Peres, to keep his right-wing political base.

Haifa economics professor Steven Plaut turned out to be prescient: when Sharon was only in office a month, Plaut wrote (March 2001 Outpost): “It could very well be that Sharon’s actual role in history will be to take Israel to the brink of destruction. If even he pursues Oslo, if even he has no agenda and no vision, then what hope is there for survival?” By April 2002 Sharon was proposing “buffer zones” to separate Israel from the Palestinian Arabs, something that sounded suspiciously like the Labor-proposed “Wall” he had hitherto denounced. And sure enough, two months later, Defense Minister Ben Eliezer announced a 362 kilometer fence would be constructed to wallIsrael off from the Palestinians.

Despite his sad performance, it was impossible not to hope for Sharon’s reelection in 2003, given that the platform of the Labor Party, under the new leadership of Avram Mitzna, called for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza – and Sharon at least denounced this plan. We were moreover encouraged when we learned from Mitzna (speaking to the Israeli paper Haaretz) that on meeting after the election with Sharon to explore the possibility of another unity government, he was “shocked” by Sharon’s refusal to consider evacuating the Gaza settlements, hearing instead “a lecture on the strategic importance of Netzarim and the historic importance of Kfar Darom.”

After the election, Sharon lacked the fig-leaf of needing to satisfy left-wing coalition partners, for Mitzna, believing Labor had been hurt by participating in the previous Sharon government, decided to remain in the opposition. Sharon nonetheless proceeded as if Labor guided policy. The new administration had to respond to the “Road Map,” produced by the United States, the European Union, the Soviet Union and the UN (three of the four clearly hostile to Israel) which called for Israel’s retreat to the 1949 borders and a full fledged Palestinian state by 2005. As Shmuel Katz wrote (Outpost, June 2003), Israel was given precisely the same treatment as Czechoslovakia at Munich on September 29, 1938. It was presented with a diktat. When the Sharon government protested that the Road Map needed changes, then National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice declared the Road Map was “not subject to negotiation” and Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sharon “evidently does not understand that there is no room for discussion.” Sharon’s government caved in. Sharon even refused to submit the Road Map for Knesset approval on the spurious ground it was not a legally signed document – this, although its consequences for Israel could not have been more profound. As Shmuel Katz pointed out (Outpost, September 2003), Sharon accepted a document made in secret, hostile in purpose, prepared in collusion with some of Israel’s worst enemies.

But this was only the beginning. By February 2004, only a year after winning reelection on a platform denouncing Labor’s plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, Sharon had made this proposal his own. His supporters in the settlements were dumbfounded. They could find excuses for his accepting the Road Map in the supposition that behind the scenes U.S. pressures were too great for Israel to resist (although if that were the case, a real leader would have resigned, publicly denouncing the pressures being brought). In any case, the Road Map was going nowhere because the PA ignored the single demand made upon it, that the PA make a good faith effort to end terror. Why then reward the PA with “land for nothing,” with what indeed would be interpreted by the Palestinian Arabs themselves as “land for terror?”

It was so difficult to find any rational explanation for Sharon’s “conversion” that the questions piled up. What transformed Sharon from the champion of settlements to their destroyer? From the leader who said a Palestinian state on the west bank of the Jordan spelled Israel’s doom to the Prime Minister who declared creation of such a state “the central goal” of his next (Kadima) administration? From the man who called the settlers Israel’s finest citizens to the man who uprooted them and wiped out their communities? From the man who scorned the very idea of a wall to the man who thought a wall would safely seal Israel off from neighbors bent on her destruction?

There have been many explanations, none satisfactory. Was this his method of staving off the looming corruption investigation of himself and his sons? That might have been a factor in the decision to expel the Gaza communities, but could not explain the rest. Had he come to believe the Israeli people were so tired, so demoralized, that they no longer had the stamina for confronting the harsh realities of deterrence as the price for existence in the Arab Middle East? If so, Sharon’s response represented a terrible failure of leadership. A true leader sets forth the truth of the situation as he sees it, rallies his people, encourages them to confront honestly the challenges before them – he does not feed their delusions, deceiving them with false promises of “peace and security.” Or had Sharon himself become delusional in his old age? Recognizing that Oslo was based on the fantasy that the Arabs wanted peace, did he come to believe in what Caroline Glick rightly calls an even more dangerous fantasy, that Israel could “disengage” from the Middle East by retreating behind a barricade?

The best explanation may well lie in a little remembered episode in Sharon’s history, his brief leadership of the Shlomzion Party. It revealed that while Sharon may have taken the business of warfare seriously, politics was for him a game in which he had little respect for the participants or for political principles and looked for personal advantage. Our thanks to Boris Shusteff for reminding us of this episode in his “Dissecting Sharon” (which draws on a 1985 biography of Sharon by Israeli journalist Uzi Benziman.)

First a little background. In 1973 Sharon entered politics and through the force of his energy and personality, created the Likud, welding together the chief opposition (to Labor) parties. Disappointed when the new party still failed to topple Labor, Sharon left politics to become military advisor to then Prime Minister Rabin. Dissatisfied in this role, he returned to the Likud, where he sought to displace Menachem Begin as head of the party. When that failed Sharon decided to create his own political party.

To general astonishment, Sharon reached out to a man on the far left of the political spectrum, asking Yossi Sarid to take the second place on Shlomzion’s list in the 1977 elections. The new party advocated negotiations with the PLO and the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria (Sharon wanted Israel to retain control of security arrangements). The enormity of this can only be appreciated in the context of the time: in 1977 Arafat and his PLO were anathema to both Labor and Likud which viewed them as murderers to be hunted down. The well known left-wing journalist Amos Kenan became Sharon’s spokesman. Even long-time champion of a Palestinian state Uri Avnery considered linking up with Shlomzion, whose very name “Peace of Zion” suggested the new orientation. When negotiations with the far-left failed to mobilize sufficient support (Sarid turned Sharon down and an effort to meet with Arafat fizzled), Sharon turned on a dime and now portrayed himself as to the right of the Likud, calling for expansion of Jewish settlements.

When Sharon realized that his political acrobatics were not paying off in public support, he sought to return to the Likud (to which only weeks earlier he had vowed publicly never to return, regardless of what happened to his new party). But although Begin was amenable, the party was not and Sharon was forced to go to the elections on the Shlomzion list. This election turned out to be the revolutionary upset which finally toppled Labor as Israel’s ruling party and installed Menachem Begin as Prime Minister. Shlomzion only won two seats. Begin welcomed back to the fold a repentant Sharon who promptly dismantled Shlomzion. There was from now on no left-wing rhetoric: seeking to position himself as the ailing Begin’s heir, Sharon henceforth portrayed himself as an ardent supporter of Herut ideology. (He even voted against the Camp David agreement with Egypt, although he subsequently undertook the destruction of Yamit for the Begin government.)

The brief saga of Shlomzion nonetheless offered fair warning: one could not count on Sharon’s political principles should a very different set of ideas come to seem to him expedient. The episode foretold the future in another respect as well. At a press conference for the newly emergent Shlomzion, Sharon declared that “for him a political party was only a means” and if good ideas could not be fulfilled within a given framework, it was perfectly appropriate to create another. It was scarcely surprising then that almost thirty years later Sharon should once again abandon the Likud to create the Kadima Party, giving him more latitude to achieve his current “good idea” of “disengagement.”

But whatever the reasons for Sharon’s actions, the results are already clear. He opened a moral chasm within Israeli society, strengthened Hamas (which takes credit for Israel’s retreat), brought the front line closer to Israel’s major cities as the rockets that once fell on Gush Katif are aimed at Israeli population centers, demonstrated to the Arabs that Israel is so desperate and vulnerable it will make radical withdrawals without any Arab quid pro quo and set the precedent for ethnic cleansing of parts of the Land of Israel by its own people. The ironies are enormous. Twice Sharon was cheated out of victory on the battlefield, first in the Yom Kippur War, when the road to Cairo lay open but Israel was forced by U.S. pressure to supply Egypt’s encircled Third Army, and then in the Lebanon war, when U.S. pressure once again forced Sharon to allow PLO forces to sail away, unimpeded, into the distance. Politically, in his last years Sharon cheated himself – and Israel -- out of the victory over Arab enemies that lay within reach.

Today Sharon is being eulogized by those who once reviled him and for all the wrong reasons: not for what he did to strengthen Israel as soldier and builder, but for what he did to undermine her in his last declining years.

WHAT WE AT AFSI REMEMBER

This remembrance of Sharon the warrior is from The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinovich, p. 139]

[During the Yom Kippur War] the canal line was thinly defended by a series of strongpoints called the Bar-Lev line, which were designed to be integrated with mobile defenses by tanks moving into the spaces between them. The artillery attack by the Eqyptians (10,500 shells in the first minute, or 175 per second) was so devastating and the effectiveness of the Sagger missile against Israeli tanks was so great, that the soldiers – mostly civilian reservists – in the Bar-Lev line were cut off and surrounded.

This was the situation when Sharon arrived on the Suez front 18 hours after the war had begun. He had come ahead of his armored division, driven in a pick-up truck. Israeli tanks were withdrawing all along the line as he came up.

Sharon strode into Tasa, the Israeli command post behind the Suez Canal, and asked to be put in radio contact with the forts in his area. He identified himself only by his code name “forty.” Immediately, his conversation with one of the forts was cut in on by a soldier:

“Forty, forty. We know you. We know you will get us out of here. Please come to us.”

Amidst defeat, death and fear….hope: Ariel Sharon had arrived at the front.