The Reinvention of Areil Sharon

...The four other NRP Knesset members have so far opted to remain in the coalition...

...To the ideological Right, which considers Gaza an integral, Godgiven part of Greater Israel, the proposal was not merely outrageous but macabre...

...There are hints, too, that Sharon sees the Gaza withdrawal as part of a long-term scenario aimed less at achieving peace than permitting Israel to endure in reasonable comfort a struggle with no visible end...

...Foreign leaders, uneasy about the unilateral nature of the move, urged that Israel instead negotiate the pullout with the PA to avoid leaving a power vacuum in Gaza...

...But his overall objective was not changed...

...The fact that some 70 per cent of the Israeli public backs the Gaza withdrawal, according to polls, makes territorial concessions in the future a pragmatic, not ideological, issue...

...The instinctive reaction of the Right, Sharon's ostensible constituency, was that he was making an outlandish joke in order to mask some arcane political move...

...He even proposed abandoning the Philadelphi Road, the border buffer between Gaza and Egypt under which the Palestinians over the years dug close to 100 arms-smuggling tunnels that the Army uncovered...

...So Sharon currently heads a minority government, with only 59 of the 120 Knesset members supporting him...

...He's gone mad," said Knesset member Shaul Yahalom of the National Religious Party (NRP...

...He's paid to think," says his bureau chief and eminence grise, Dov Weisglass...

...His "painful concessions" speech, whichhe continued to wheel out from time to time, seemed increasingly threadbare and his mention of a Palestinian state grew rare...

...Another is the quid pro quo achieved with the Bush Administration regarding the Palestinian refugees and West Bank settlement blocs...

...pledge to support Israel's retention of unspecified portions of the West Bank in any final settlement, plus a statement opposing the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel...

...Two days later, on June 8, the picture changed again...

...Sharon therefore faced the prospect ofa 12-11 Cabinet defeat of his initiative...

...Bowing to the Army, Sharon agreed not to relinquish the Philadelphi Road in the near future...

...Virtually overnight, an outgunned Ariel Sharon forced his plan for evacuating Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip on Right-wing Cabinet ministers, including his main adversary Benjamin Netanyahu...

...What sense does it make to give up a valuable bargaining chip without asking for anything from the Palestinians in return...

...Abroad, he is still largely seen as Israel's Hard Man who was guilty of overkill during his years as a commando leader and who turned a limited incursion into Lebanon in 1982 into a fullscale war...

...And now, as the Prime Minister—without rhyme, reason, Cabinet support, or international pressure—he was cavalierly declaring his intention to abandon the Gaza Strip...

...Although it had absolutely no legal weight, Sharon pointedly declared that he, and every other Likud official, would be bound by the outcome...

...But this time the wily tactician was outmaneuvered by Right-wing militants who staged a highly effective campaign of house calls on Likud voters for oneon-one persuasion...

...For good measure, he also brought the three resisting senior Likud ministers into line by publicly accusing them of pursuing personal political interests at the expense of Israel's vital relations with the United States...

...He spoke softly and consulted widely within and outside the government, making notes during these conversations like a diligent student...

...It was dismissed then as apiece of whimsy floated by an opposition party desperate for a gimmick...

...It was not until a series of grisly suicide bombings in the spring of 2002, culminating in the Passover eve bombing of a Seder in a Netanya hotel, that Sharon sent the Army in to reoccupy, in effect, the West Bank cities...

...Back home, Sharon presented this to pullout opponents as an American quid pro quo that would be endangered if Israel failed to deliver...

...The commission ruled that Sharon could never serve as defense minister again...

...One, headlined "The End of Sharon,' stated that his "leadership has effectively come to an end...

...Before long he even spoke of a willingness to accept a Palestinian state—not in Jordan but in the Israeli-occupied territories...

...The world then would have to recognize that Gaza was no longer occupied territory, and that any violence coming from there had no justification...

...Sharon's reinvention is one of the most intriguing stories of contemporary politics...

...Many of these appeals were made by settler families...

...The Israeli public cringed at the thought of Hamas activists raising their green flag over the settlements and declaring victory...

...Instead of stepping aside when primaries were held, though, he ran and won...

...The Israeli public wanted the old "Arik"—a war leader who kicks ass...

...It was the Palestinian resistance that was causing Israel to fold its tent in Gaza, said the Islamic terrorists, and the resistance would continue until Israel was no more...

...We will not negotiate under fire" became his mantra...

...Why did Sharon undergo his dramatic conversion...

...To walk out of the Gaza Strip without a negotiated peace settlement would be to "put the wind at the back of terrorism," said Chief of Staff General Moshe Ya'alon, a kibbutznik not suspected of Right-wing sympathies...

...At this point Sharon demonstrated that he has not lost any of his famed battlefield tenaciousness: He altered the balance in his Cabinet by dismissing the two members of the extreme Right-wing National Unity Party, thereby gaining an 11-10 edge...

...Any agreement with him would simply be drawing the starting line for the next round of the conflict...

...When situations change, he adapts accordingly...

...Against THIS background of political deadlock, Sharon four months ago granted an interview to one of his most vigorous critics in the Israeli media, columnist Yoel Marcus of the daily Ha'aretz, and let drop the idea of evacuating all 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip...

...Sharon wanted to pull out from every inch of Gaza territory the way Israel pulled back from southern Lebanon to a UN-recognized border line in 2000...

...Those who didn't want him as defense minister," said an admiring journalist ominously, "will get him back as prime minister...

...Further approval will be required by next March when physical preparations, such as alternative housing, are completed...

...Two front-page articles in Ha'aretz at the end of May spelled out his political epitaph...

...By implication, any Israeli reaction to such violence—e.g...

...It would be done unilaterally, said Sharon—that is, without entering into negotiations with the PA...

...Abraham Rabinovitch, a new NL contributor, is the author of The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, published this spring...

...The Army and other security services reacted no less negatively...

...We will be out of Gaza by the end of 2005," he asserted...

...But once the battle over the Gaza démarche was joined, Sharon started to maneuver again as of yore...

...It was generally assumed that Sharon, adjusting to his new role as national leader, was adopting a statesmanlike pose that would, in fact, have little impact on his actual policies...

...Because there was little prospect of the fire ending, given the overwhelming support the intifada enjoyed among the Palestinian populace, Sharon was seen as turning the violence into a convenient excuse for avoiding negotiations leading to a territorial compromise...

...And he was the most outspoken advocate in Israel of the "Jordan is Palestine" school, which called for channeling the national aspirations of the Palestinians across the Jordan River to the Hashemite Kingdom, most of whose residents already are Palestinians, thereby leaving the land between the river and the sea for Greater Israel...

...Sharon had proposed leaving the settlements intact, including the homes and the agricultural infrastructure...

...But it was to a younger generation, represented by the suave and articulate Netanyahu, that the party faithful turned in the mid-1990s for leadership...

...Sharon refused to engage in any negotiations with the PA as long as it was headed by Arafat...

...Why...

...Consequently, Israel must prepare itself for not having peaceful relations with the Palestinians for a long time, perhaps a very long time...

...Since coming to office, Sharon had basically been reactive, both to the intifada and to various international peace initiatives...

...To outflank the politicians, Sharon decided to hold a referendum among registered Likud voters...

...Sharon has come to the conclusion that there is no future for the occupation...

...restraints...

...It was Sharon, after all, who was responsible for construction of most of the settlements and who was their defender over two decades against all who would do them harm...

...The brassy, somewhat intimidating Arik of old— "the bulldozer"—had given way to a courtly elder statesman...

...No one in Israel was better suited than Sharon for initiating this profound shift...

...The same idea had been put forward by the Labor Party more than a year earlier...

...After serving for decades as the archdemon of the Israeli Left—a symbol ofbrute power and of the occupation—he thus implausibly became its champion...

...In addition, the evacuated settlers' houses would be demolished...

...The readiness of Arafat's successors to accept Israel's existence is, in Sharon's view, an open question as well...

...The leader of the National Religious Party, Housing MinisterEffie Eitam, and his deputy Yitzchak Levy, quit the government...

...While 48 per cent of the eligible voters abstained, and 40 per cent of those who did go to the polls backed the plan, 60 per cent rejected it...

...asked the public...

...Nevertheless, opposition to the plan hardened within the Cabinet and Knesset...

...But when he repeated the proposal in public and made clear his intention to establish it as government policy, even the Left was flabbergasted...

...The modifications specified that the pullout would be made in four separate stages, with the possibility of calling a halt after any stage...

...The Palestinians will not be peace partners as long as Arafat is around, the Prime Minister says...

...When Netanyahu was defeated by the Labor Party's Ehud Barak in 1999 and unexpectedly abdicated the Likud helm, Sharon seized the party "temporarily" as its elder statesman...

...To provide the Palestinian militants with an apparent victory, other officers agreed, would encourage them to accelerate violence on the West Bank in the expectation that it would force Israel from there as well...

...One is fear that the international community will force a detrimental settlement on Israel if it does not take some action itself...

...An Israeli inquiry commission found Sharon indirectly responsible forthe massacre because the militiamen entered the camp at his initiative, although his intention was for them only to root out armed Palestinians...

...Within days Sharon announced his determination to press ahead after modifying his scheme to take the voters' objections into account...

...The unilateral nature of the Gaza withdrawal is intended to emphasize that Israel will determine on its own how to meet the challenge confronting it...

...With the violence of the Palestinian intifada spiraling out of control, Israel's Arabs threatening to join in, and a general war with the Arab world perceived as a possibility, Israel faced its greatest threat since the Yom Kippur War...

...that terror cannot be wiped out by force...

...that in the end, Israel could face a humiliating imposed solution in which it would lose everything...

...They were not about to ignore the Likud Central Committee's threats to take vengeance in future primaries on any minister who voted for the plan...

...Sharon himself has offered several reasons for his surprising stance...

...A taming point was his ouster as Defense Minister in 1983 because of the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps of Beirut...

...Accusing Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Yasir Arafat of deliberately using terror to achieve political gains, he kept him imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters and would have expelled or assassinated him had it not been for U.S...

...He began with a strategic visit in April to Washington, where he explained his pullout plan and obtained from President George W. Bush an unprecedented U.S...

...So it had best shorten its defense lines on the ground and in the international arena by narrowing the battlefield as much as possible...

...The result of the May 2 referendum was a resounding defeat for the pullout proposal and a political blow to its initiator...

...At his inauguration, Sharon surprisingly expressed a readiness to make "painful concessions" in the pursuit of peace with the Palestinians...

...He proceeded to do so, but on a measured scale...

...The other, headlined "Prime Minister Netanyahu,' said, "The government is today being run de facto by Netanyahu, economically and politically...

...In any case, the overwhelming vote he received from the Israeli electorate, including many longtime Labor voters, had not been cast for a born-again peacenik...

...After Barak's bid to make peace with the Palestinians ran aground in 2000 and he was toppled as Labor's leader, Sharon was swept into office at the age of 73...

...Sharon's statement, by contrast, was a thunderbolt...

...Few Israelis did...

...He's a Labor plant," charged a Right-wing activist on an Israel Television talk show, suggesting that Sharon had deliberately inserted himself into the ranks of the Right decades ago for this moment of betrayal...

...the firing of Katyusha rockets at nearby Israeli cities—would have to be regarded as legitimate self-defense...

...But the Labor Party— deemed by political observers as likely to become his full partner down the road— has promised Sharon that he can count on their 19 votes as a "safety net...

...These were extraordinary remarks coming from Sharon, if taken seriously...

...With the conflict persisting, the Israeli Left and the international community condemned Sharon for refusing to seek a political resolution...

...Trading Settlements for Security The Reinvention of Ariel Sharon By Abraham Rabinovitch Jerusalem The lumbering septuagenarian who has occupied the prime minister's office here for the past three years reverted to his nimble militant mode in early June when faced with an incipient coup...

...Columnist Marcus, who is well aware of Sharon's looseness with the truth in the past, believes he is not engaged now in any political subterfuge: "We are talking about a mental switch...

...He adopted the ploy only after polls showed that a majority of the party backed him...

...Indeed, chortles of pleasure were soon emanating from Hamas and Islamic Jihad...

...Within the Likud, a party he himself cobbled together as a platform for Menachem Begin in 1973, Sharon's power waned over the years...

...This gave him a 14-7 majority for approval in principle of the Gaza pullout...

...Three key Likud figures—Finance Minister Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Education Minister Limor Livnat—said they would join those in the Cabinet who were against the revised proposal, since it was basically the same as the one rejected in the Likud referendum...

...He insisted that there would be no talks until the violence ended...

...He also conceived and executed Israel's massive settlement program— aimed at leaving no room for a viable Palestinian state—with an enthusiasm and efficiency no other Israeli minister could have mustered...

...Despite his dour prognosis, however, Sharon has already moved Israel closer to the possibility of peace by desanctifying the notion of a Greater Israel and of settlements for many on the Israeli Right...