Stroke invites look at Ariel Sharon's past

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is seriously ill in a Jerusalem hospital after suffering a second stroke within three weeks and "massive bleeding" in the brain. The prime minister's powers were formally transferred to his deputy, Ehud Olmert, as doctors confirmed that the 77-year-old Sharon had a "significant stroke." As of this writing, his vital signs are stable, but the leader remains in a serious condition, with political observers wildly speculating on the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations in the aftermath of a post-Sharon era. Alongside many of the political forecasts in the press, numerous retrospectives have appeared in anticipation of forthcoming eulogies, in which the prime minister has been sympathetically defined by his most recent exploits in office. Much of the pre-posthumous Sharon myth-making has reduced his political career to a tale of redemption: The Warrior Who Found His Way To Peace. Less has been said about his controversial past. And a checkered past he has, bloody and misbegotten. Ariel Sharon is known as "the bulldozer." As Israeli defense minister, he was the architect of the Phalangist militia massacre of more than 1,000 people in 1982 at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. He also triggered the second Palestinian Intifada by paying a single visit to the Arab "holy of holies" in Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, in 2000. He is the father of the Israeli settlement movement and, as prime minister, presided over the building of the "security fence," an apartheid-like wall seen by the Palestinians as enshrining the separation of Palestinians and Israelis by encroaching on Arab land in defiance of international law. He is the leader who confined Yassir Arafat to his bunker in Ramallah after swearing he would never deal with his old foe whom he had once forced into exile from Beirut. The brutal tactics he advocated during the five-year second Palestinian Intifada, in which 3,500 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis died, did little to suggest Sharon was for a peaceful conflict resolution. One terrible incident–praised by Sharon at the time as a "great success"–was the attack by Israel on Salah Shehada, a Hamas leader, which slaughtered nine children along with eight adults. Their names gave a frightful reality to this child carnage: 18-month-old Ayman Matar, three-year-old Mohamed Matar, five-year-old Diana Matar, four-year-old Sobhi Hweiti, six-year-old Mohamed Hweiti, 10-year-old Ala Matar, 15-year-old Iman Shehada, 17-year-old Maryam Matar. And Dina Matar. She was two months old. An Israeli air force pilot dropped a one-ton bomb on their homes from a US-made F-16 aircraft on July 22, 2002. Sharon was born in Palestine in 1928, which was then under British mandate. After fighting in every Israeli war, from the independence war of 1948 to the Middle East war of 1973, he came to prominence as a ruthless commander. In 1953, he led the army commando unit "101" that carried out a raid inside Jordan in which 69 people were killed in reprisal for a Palestinian guerrilla attack. He was blocked from becoming chief of staff after his occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 brought accusations of a "disregard for human life." After serving in the 1973 Middle East war, Sharon left the military and entered politics, founding the hardline Likud Party, which came to power in 1977. The Israelis forced him out of office after an inquiry commission found him "indirectly responsible" for the Sabra and Shatila rapes and killings. However, the inquiry into this atrocity provided absolute proof that Israeli soldiers saw the massacre taking place. The evidence of Lieutenant Avi Grabovsky was crucial. He was an Israeli deputy tank commander and reported what he saw to his higher command. "Don't interfere," the senior officer said. Afterwards, Israeli embassies around the world would claim that the commission held Sharon only "indirectly responsible" for the massacre. It was untrue. The last page of the official Israeli report held Sharon "personally responsible." Soon after, he retired to his ranch in the Negev desert. Yet he returned to active politics and, in 1999, led the Likud party to office after his long-time rival, Benjamin Netanyahu was defeated in a general election. Briefly, the Sabra and Shatila massacres returned to haunt Sharon when the Israeli-trained Phalangist commander, Elie Hobeika, now working for the Syrians, agreed to turn the evidence against Sharon to the International Criminal Court in Brussels. The day after the Israeli attorney general declared Sharon's defense a "state" matter, Hobeika was killed by a massive car bomb in east Beirut. Israel denied responsibility. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Brussels and quietly threatened to withdraw NATO headquarters from Belgium if the country maintained its laws to punish war criminals from foreign nations. Within months, George W. Bush had declared Sharon, the alleged war criminal, "a man of peace." Over the years, Sharon served his country as defense minister, agriculture minister, foreign minister and housing minister. On Feb. 6, 2001, when he won a landslide victory for the prime minister's office, he pledged to achieve "security and true peace" while insisting he would not be bound by previous negotiations with the Palestinians. As prime minister, he persuaded the United States that the internationally-backed "roadmap for peace" was dead, as Palestinian suicide bombings took their toll. In 2002, he won President George W. Bush's support for his unilateral decision to withdraw from Gaza and part of the West Bank as the first step towards Bush's "vision" of a two-state solution to the conflict. The withdrawal from Gaza split his Likud party, and he left it two months ago to form Kadima last November. By forming the new centrist party Kadima, he had been confident of winning a third term as prime minister after upcoming elections in March.