Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
How Ariel Sharon plowed his way back onto the bloody stage of Mideast politics.
Oct 17, 2000 | As negotiators in the Middle East work furiously to broker a cease-fire agreement to end the violence that has cost nearly 100 lives, the man many Palestinians blame for inciting the riots looms ominously in the background.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has threatened to bring Ariel Sharon, Israel's famed and feared old warrior, into a national unity government if the U.S.-brokered summit in Egypt fails or the violence continues. The move would be a response to the scare tactics drummed up by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose own inflammatory actions during the past two weeks included releasing dozens of terrorists belonging to the Hamas organization from Palestinian jails.
If Sharon enters Barak's government, "our deterrence will be better," believes Efraim Inbar, director of the Besa Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. "In this region there's an advantage to being feared."
On paper, references to Sharon swallow up gallons of type in the indexes of even the most basic books on the Middle East: Sharon and the War of Independence; Sharon and the Six Day War; Sharon and the Yom Kippur War -- Sharon and every single Israeli-Arab conflict for that matter, up to the present deadly clashes. Sharon as agriculture minister; defense minister; housing minister; industry and trade minister; infrastructure minister; foreign minister. Sharon and the Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which hundreds of Palestinian refugees were slaughtered in cold blood by Lebanese militiamen while the Israeli army -- under his leadership -- stood by and did nothing.
So when Sharon set foot on the white pavement of the Noble Sanctuary, the airy, tree-lined esplanade of Jerusalem's most precious mosques, for an early morning stroll two weeks ago, his visit could hardly have gone by unnoticed. Had Sharon not announced his visit days in advance, summoned the world's TV cameras and mobilized hundreds of policemen in riot gear, the sound of his footstep may still have sent shock waves crashing across the Middle East.
By now, his name has been bellowed and spat in heavy Arabic accents by hundreds of thousands of protesters in Israel and the Palestinian territories; in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt; from Morocco, on the Atlantic coast, to the gulf shores of Iraq. Even the U.N. Security Council, from its Olympian cloud in New York, berated Sharon for his provocative behavior, albeit without explicitly naming him, in a resolution 10 days ago.
Whether his visit alone unleashed the torrent of stone-throwing, death and anger that is sweeping the region is questionable. Many claim the Palestinians were looking for a pretext to drop out of a dead-end diplomatic peace process and seized the prospect of war, unleashed by Sharon's visit, to advance their political struggle.
Others, including Sharon himself, admit the point of the visit was to make a bold, political statement: What Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical first and second temples. As such, it is Jewish property, and a walk on the Mount is every Jew's God-given right. (Granted, most rabbis rule that Jews should not set foot on the Mount, precisely because of its sanctity -- but Sharon is a big-picture man.)
By affirming Israel's exclusive sovereignty over the most coveted piece of real estate in the annals of Palestinian-Israeli history, Sharon was asking for trouble. But like a tragic hero, it was almost inevitable he would choose to do so.
Since he entered politics a quarter-century ago, banking on his reputation as a brilliant warrior, Sharon's actions have been motivated by one principle: seizing the offense by creating what Israelis call "facts on the ground."
In the occupied territories, that has meant building fortified settlements perched on hills like medieval city-states that dominate Palestinian towns and give the Israeli heartland more security depth. Or buying property, smack in the middle of the Jerusalem's Muslim quarter, to assert the right of Jews to live wherever they please. No matter that U.N. Resolution 242 calls for the withdrawal of Israel's troops from the territories it captured in 1967, namely the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza and the Golan Heights. The idea is to push forward, without bothering with the legalese, until the reality of Jewish life in the biblical land of Judea and Samaria is too strong to dislodge.
Get Salon in your mailbox!