Will Sharon Survive?
SALPETER, ELIAHU
A SOLDIER'S RECORD Will Sharon Survive? by eliahu salpeter TelAvtv The three-man commission headed by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Yitzchak Ka-han was only in the first week of its...
...Thedislikegoes back to the early days of Sharon's military career when, so his former colleagues maintain, the brilliant young officer displayed a keen talent for shifting the responsibility for mistakes and occasional failures to others...
...And in the case of a few of his actions—such as the continued bombing of West Beirut despite PLO leader Yasir Arafat's final agreement to pull out his forces—Begin let it be known that he had sharply reprimanded Sharon...
...One of the evening papers reported that the officer had been sent to the U.S...
...Tempers in the Army were cooling somewhat when the public demand for a full-scale inquiry into the events at Sabra and Shatila, spearheaded by the Labor Opposition, reached its peak...
...decisions had resulted from incomplete or outright misleading information supplied by Sharon...
...The military men charged that Sharon was trying to make the IDF a scapegoat for his own shortcomings...
...At a second meeting, attended by Sharon at his own request, the charges were repeated...
...Subsequently, turning to the Right, he bulldozed his way into the Likud coalition consisting of Begin's Herat Party, the Liberal Party and some other small factions...
...At the beginning of the Lebanon campaign, Begin promised to have a formal peace treaty in hand before the end of the year...
...At the same time, he was creating a reputation for daring and original tactics—and for insubordination in their pursuit...
...It has long been apparent that he would like to be Prime Minister Menachem Begin's successor...
...Occasionally this led to tensions: There were indications that some of the least popular Cabinet Eliahu Salpeter, who reports regularly for The New Leader from Israel, is a correspondent for the daily, Ha'aretz...
...Eytan ordered the commander of the brigade to set the record straight with reporters...
...Accusations of disingenuousness toward his Cabinet colleagues and conflicts with IDF commanders cropped up almost simultaneously in the Lebanon campaign...
...Despite Sharon's desire for the Defense Ministry as his reward, a wary Begin ("Sharon would send his tanks to my office") appointed him Minister of Agriculture...
...But Defense Minister Ariel Sharon—who would attempt to have his October 25 appearance before the commission closed to the public—already was acting as if he were a contender in the home stretch of a bitter election campaign, making fiery patriotic speeches in front of audiences whose loud applause was certain in advance...
...Sharon denied there had been a leak, and also managed to induce Eytan to put out a joint communique papering over the discrepancies between their versions of the brigade's call-up...
...He farmed for a while and eventually entered politics, forming the min-iscule Shlomzion Party...
...Another paper followed up and asserted that the story, ostensibly datelined New York, was actually leaked from the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv...
...Since the bombardment of West Beirut and the Christian murder of Palestinians the issue seems moot: The question has become whether Sharon will be able to keep his present post until—and especially following—the Kahan report...
...After Likud won the 1981 elections and the Liberal Party muted its fierce objections, Sharon finally secured the slot he coveted...
...InaTV interview hecharged the press and Opposition with so seriously undermining morale that, during the seige of Beirut, he and the Chief of Staff decided not to call up a certain reserve brigade for fear of its response...
...Sharon, many observers believe, is indeed fighting for his political life...
...At one point, in a desperate search for allies, he tried to attract Labor Party left-wing enfant terribleYossi Sarid...
...Next came the flap about a parachute commander...
...Sharon was now supplying an excuse for this not happening: His bull-in-a-china-shop manner started another imbroglio for Begin, who told Sharon to desist...
...The pair departed two weeks before the battle there ended and theslaughter began...
...An air of misconduct is attached even to Sharon's most celebrated feat—the clandestine crossing of the Suez Canal at the head of a small column of tanks during the Yom Kippur War...
...Thus the question Begin must ponder is whether firing Sharon immediately could absolve the rest of the Cabinet—or whether Sharon tossed overboard before the commission issues its findings could drag down his colleagues with him...
...In addition to lessening Sharon's ability to function as head of the defense establishment, all of these incidents have contributed to ferment in Begin's Cabinet...
...Although he privately tried to prevent the reappointment of General Raphael Eytan as Chief of Staff for another term, the two men apparently saw eye to eye on being tough toward Israel's Arab neighbors as well as in the occu-piedWestBank.With Weizman and the late Moshe Dayan out of the Cabinet and Sharon in, instead of the Defense and Foreign Ministers restraining the Prime Minister, now the Prime Minister had to curb his impulsive, superhawk-ish Defense Minister...
...The reaction was violent: Several of the brigade's officers, disregarding normal procedures, let it be known that the unit was among the first called up when the Lebanon war started...
...The resignation in protest of Brigadier General Amram Mitzna, commander of the National Staff College, was followed by a tumultuous meeting between Chief of Staff Eytan and all generals...
...This earned him the gratitude of the ultranational-ists and Begin's appreciation...
...The Kahan commission's investigation is expected to take several months...
...Prior to the Lebanon invasion, few here considered Sharon's goal realistic...
...In recent weeks, however, Sharon has been clashing head-on with the top command of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), many of whose generals have little love for him...
...The charge immediately backfired...
...Under Begin, Likud ousted Labor for the first time in Israel's history...
...While the public outrage at Sharon's readiness to malign the IDF and further damage Israel's image abroad in order to shift blame from himself was still running high, he dropped another bombshell...
...The controversial general has always been an outsider in Begin's Likud bloc...
...A professional soldier, he quit the Army when he became convinced he would never be awarded the top job of Chief of Staff...
...He quickly set about accelerating the establishment of Jewish settlements on the West Bank...
...At this point a top official of the Jewish Agency issued an incensed correction: The commander had simply been asked by American friends to spend his vacation as their guest...
...This was too much for Eytan: He invited the top editors of Israel's newspapers to a meeting and, in "complaining" about "distortions published in the media" concerning the brigade, he repudiated practically all of Sharon's dark hints...
...This he did spectacularly, and without any censure of Sharon, although at home he was reportedly one of the Minister's most trenchant critics...
...by eliahu salpeter TelAvtv The three-man commission headed by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Yitzchak Ka-han was only in the first week of its investigation into the massacres in Beirut' s Shatila and Sabra refugee camps...
...Initially, most of the attention was on the timing of Sharon's knowledge of the carnage and what he told Begin...
...Shimon Peres, Defense Minister in the last Labor government, accused Sharon of libeling the Israeli Army and explained that the "Israeli forces" with the Phal-angists at the Tel el Zaatar refugee camp in 1976 consisted of two middle-ranking officers who spent several weeks assessing the Christians' situation because they had made a request for arms...
...He accepted on the condition that several public speeches be arranged to improve Israel's standing...
...The acrimony intensified after the massacres...
...When Defense Minister Ezer Weizman resigned in a dispute over budget cuts, Begin nevertheless continued to resist Sharon's pressures and assumed the portfolio himself...
...The hesitation over summoning the brigade, he said, stemmed from their having been relieved just a few days earlier...
...This attack behind Egyptian lines was a major factor in turning the tide of battle, and put Israeli forces within 60 miles of Cairo...
...The Defense Minister has similarly toned down his harsh attacks on Americans, whom he accused of torpedoing Israel's efforts to sign a formal peace treaty with Lebanon...
...on a speechmaking tour as part of Israel's PR effort and had not only used this platform to vilify Sharon, but had spent most of his time vacationing...
...Then the discord between him and his generals came to dominate the debate...
...The stories, though, were kept from being printed...
...Lashing out wildly in support of Begin's initial refusal of such scrutiny, Sharon suggested on nationwide television that Labor was guilty of a similar deed when it was in power six years ago...
...Then the early success of the thrust to the north set many politicians wondering...
...the Defense Minister angrily retorted that if the generals wanted to engage in politics in a democracy they should resign—as Sharon did some years ago—and run for the Knesset...
...it saw heavy fighting, was sent home shortly before its second call-up, and mobilized in full again (to be sure, with some grumbling in a bull session...
...Yet once he had cut Sharon down to size, Begin always backed him...
Vol. 65 • November 1982 • No. 20
