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| ARIEL SHARON | |
 February 2001 
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From military leader to foreign minister, Ariel Sharon developed a reputation for ruthlessness, taking tough stands on Israel's relationship with its Arab neighbors -- a record that has earned him a reputation as a political "hawk." |
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Sharon, 72, the Likud Party candidate for prime minister, claims a public career that spans the lifetime of the Israeli state itself. Last September, Sharon led a group from his right-wing opposition party up to Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a site sacred to both Muslims and Jews, but which has been administered by Palestinians according to long standing custom. Palestinians interpreted Sharon's high-profile visit as a cultural slap in the face. Riots erupted the next day at the Mount and in the West Bank and Gaza, and guerrilla attacks have continued sporadically for more than four months. More than 370 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians. Faced with declining popularity and the loss of a governing majority in parliament, Prime Minister Ehud Barak resigned in December and announced he would run for his seat in a special election set for Feb. 6. When former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not run, Sharon, as the Likud party leader, emerged as Barak's opponent. He currently holds a commanding two-digit lead over Barak in polls. The son of Russian immigrants to British Palestine, Sharon was born in 1928 and as a teenager joined the Haganah, a Jewish underground military organization. By the 1948 war for independence, the 20-year-old Sharon was already a platoon commander. In the 1950s Sharon led a special commando unit, which carried out retaliatory raids on Arabs suspected of attacks against Israel. In one raid, his group responded to the killing of an Israeli mother and her two children by blowing up 45 houses in the Jordanian-ruled village of Qibbiya. Nearly 70 people were killed, half of them women and children. During the 1956 war against Egypt, Sharon sent soldiers into the Mitla Pass, provoking an Egyptian attack that killed 38 Israelis. Army superiors accused Sharon of disobeying orders, saying he had been told to avoid such operations. This, the attack on Qibbiya and a 1970 mission against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip cemented Sharon's reputation for aggression and ruthlessness. But, along with his successful tank attacks in the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, they also established his military prowess and leadership. From 1977 to 1981, as Prime Minister Menachem Begin's minister of agriculture, Sharon supported building Jewish settlements in the occupied Arab West Bank and Gaza. The effort, intended to establish an Israeli presence that would impede the creation of a Palestinian state, earned him the nickname "Bulldozer." In June 1982, Sharon, then defense minister, orchestrated the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Arabs were killed as Sharon aimed to disrupt Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, which had set up operations in Beirut and southern Lebanon. There is still debate over whether Begin had authorized the full extent of the invasion. The move was also marred by the massacre of 800 Palestinians in refugee camps at the hands of Sharon's allies, the Christian Phalangists. Sharon eventually resigned from his defense post in 1983. Troops remained in southern Lebanon until Prime Minister Barak withdrew them last year. Over the past 18 years Sharon has held several other cabinet positions, as minister of trade, housing, infrastructure and foreign affairs. He has served in the Knesset -- most recently elected in May 1999 -- and took up the Likud Party chairmanship after Netanyahu's 1999 loss in the prime ministerial election. The approaching election has softened Sharon's rhetoric, and he seems content to maintain his poll lead with a relatively low profile campaign. He has put out the slogan "only Sharon can bring peace," but is still running largely on a pledge to protect Israeli sovereignty. Unsupportive of the 1993 Oslo accord's peace process, he opposes concessions Barak was willing to make to the Palestinians and is likely to hold firm to his hard-line reputation. |
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