Ariel Sharon was born on the February 26, 1928, in Kfar Malal, an agricultural moshav (an agricultural cooperative settlement), then in the British Mandate of Palestine, to a family of Belarusian Jews. He joined the Haganah at a young age and fought in the First Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49 (the War of Independence), rising to become a section commander. He sustained a near fatal injury in the Battles of Latrun, in 1948, when the Israeli Defence Forces unsuccessfully attempted to wrest this strategic location, on the major highway linking Israel with Jewish West Jerusalem, from the Jordanian Arab Legion. In the 1950s, Sharon came to some prominence (or notoriety, on account of the innocent Arab civilians who invariably died or suffered as a result) as a “man who did not know the meaning of fear” as the leader of Unit 101, a military unit which was set up to carry out retaliatory raids deep into territories of the neighbouring Arab countries from where Fedayeen guerillas operated against Israel.
In the Second Arab-Israeli War of 1956 (the Suez Campaign), Sharon commanded the Paratroop Brigade which linked up with the Paratroop Battalion, led by Rafael Eitan (a future chief of staff of the IDF), that had earlier been parachuted at the eastern entrance of the Mitla Pass in the Sinai. Contrary to his orders, Sharon ordered his men to storm the Pass in order to flush out the Egyptian forces ensconced there. He successfully did this, but at a frightful cost to his men. But for the intervention of his mentor, Moshe Dayan, then IDF chief of staff, Sharon may have been court-martialled. This incident was illustrative of his military and political career. An independent-minded and pragmatic man with an assertive personality, Sharon was inclined to make outspoken criticisms of his superiors and to interpret orders as he saw fit. All this did not endear Sharon to his superiors, and, later, fellow generals, who came to suspect that apart from professional considerations and his natural pugnaciousness, he was motivated by a desire for personal glory that would help him in any future political career. An officer who had served with him in the early days of Unit 101 said “He used to act like a general even when he was a major.”
However, in spite of these personal flaws, Sharon’s abilities were undeniable: he was a commander that possessed battlefield flair and boundless energy. He was adored by his men and respected by his officers for his ability to read a battle, his decisiveness, coolness under fire, ability to delegate authority, and his firm leadership. These aforementioned qualities were on full display during the Six Day War of 1967, in which Sharon’s division played an important role in the routing of the Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and even more so during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Sharon’s reserve division crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt and thus precipitated the encirclement of the 3rd Egyptian Army in the Sinai.
Sharon was one of the organizers of the Likud, a union of right wing parties, which finally broke the stranglehold of the left-leaning parties when it came into office under Menachem Begin in 1977. Sharon was the agriculture minister in the first administration of Begin, and was responsible for the establishment of settlements in the occupied territories. He became defence minister in the second Begin administration, and was responsible for the invasion of Lebanon (“Operation Peace for The Galilee”), which was designed to stop the attacks on northern Israel by Palestinian guerrillas from southern Lebanon. The resulting massacre of more than a thousand Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut by the Lebanese Christian Phalange forces, who were allies of Israel, forced Sharon to relinquish the defence portfolio and almost destroyed his political career when a commission of inquiry found him indirectly responsible for the massacre for failing to foresee it, and thus prevent the Lebanese Christian militias from gaining access to the camps.
Sharon became foreign minister in the cabinet headed by Netanyahu in 1998, and in 2001 he became prime minister after the collapse of Ehud Barak’s Labour government. In May, 2003, Sharon endorsed the “Road Map for Peace” put forward by the United States, the European Union, and Russia. He announced his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state in the future and his willingness to open talks with Mahmud Abbas in order to attain this end. Consequently, he embarked on a course of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while maintaining control of its coastline and airspace. Sharon’s plan was welcomed by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s left wing as a step towards a final peace settlement. However, it was greeted with opposition from within his own Likud party and from other right wing Israelis, on national security, military, and religious grounds. Between 16 and 30 August, 2005, Sharon controversially expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank. While his decision to withdraw from Gaza sparked bitter protests from members of the Likud party and the settler movement, opinion polls showed that it was a popular move among most of the Israeli public. On 27 September, 2005, Sharon narrowly defeated a leadership challenge initiated by Benjamin Netanyahu, his main rival in the Likud Party, who had left the cabinet to protest Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza.
On 21 November, 2005, Sharon resigned as head of Likud, and dissolved parliament to form a new centrist party called Kadima (“Forward”). On 20 December, 2005, Sharon’s long-time rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, was elected as his successor as leader of Likud. Following Sharon’s stroke and subsequent coma, Ehud Olmert replaced Sharon as Kadima’s leader in the 2006 elections. In the election, Kadima won the largest number of seats, though not a majority to form a government on their own. A coalition government of Kadima, Labour, Shas, and Israel Beytenu was thus formed with Olmert as prime minister. Sharon, on becoming prime minister in 2001, displayed his independent-mindedness, pragmatism and ability to attune to prevailing Israeli sentiment, by reversing the previous hawkish and uncompromising stance that had long characterized his career, and seeking, instead, a secure comprehensive peace between Israel and her Palestinian and Arab neighbours, that he had, like most Israelis, finally come to realize was the best guarantee for Israel’s continued existence. On the balance, there can be no doubt that he served Israel well, and was one of his country’s most significant statesmen.
• Adeogun writes from Victorial Island, Lagos.
