SHARON, ARIEL

(born Scheinerman; called Arik): Israeli military and political figure, As of 2004, prime minister of Israel. Born in February 1928 at Kefar Malal, in Palestine. In 1942, barely fourteen years old, he joined the ranks of the Haganah. Six years later he started on a military career in the new Israeli
army, the Israel Defense Force (IDF). In 1949 he commanded an intelligence unit of the Golani brigade, and in 1953 he headed a special anti-terror unit responsible for halting Palestinian incursions into Israeli territory. During the night of 14–15 October 1953, in reprisal for the murder of a woman and her daughters, the unit penetrated the village of Qibya, in West Jordan, where he ordered the dynamiting of forty-five houses, causing the death of sixty-nine persons. This action provoked widespread outrage, and Israel was condemned by the UN Security Council.

After his unit was disbanded, Ariel Sharon was transferred to a paratroop brigade, where between 1954 and 1955 he headed a battalion. In 1956, during the Suez-Sinai War, he ignored orders from army headquarters and occupied the Mitla Pass, which commanded the access to the Suez Canal. In the course of a confrontation with Egyptian troops, thirty-six of his men were killed. At the end of the conflict, accused of insubordination, he was tried and judged responsible for the death of these men; but he continued to advance in the IDF, for he had earned a reputation as a brilliant military strategist. Promoted to general in February of 1967, he commanded an armored division during the Six-Day War. Between 1969 and 1973, as chief of the southern command, he applied radical methods, demolishing thousands of homes in Gaza refugee camps to create roads for antiterror patrols.

In July of 1972, having vainly sought the position of Army chief of staff, he decided to quit the military for politics, registering as a member of the Liberal Party. With Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, he participated in the creation of the right-wing parliamentary group Likud. Mobilized in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, he commanded an armored division on the southern front. Once again ignoring orders, he crossed the Suez Canal, cutting the Egyptian Third Army off from its rear. This maneuver enabled the IDF to force the Egyptian army to surrender, and in the eyes of Israeli soldiers he became "Arik, King of Israel."

Elected a Likud representative in 1973, in 1975 Sharon became the security adviser for the Labor Party prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. After arguing with the latter he decided to found his own party, Shlomzion, which in the May elections of 1977 won two seats in the Knesset. Shortly thereafter he rejoined Likud and was appointed minister of agriculture in the government of Menachem Begin. While in this office, his support for the development of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories impeded the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations. In June of 1981 he became defense minister, and a year later was the principal architect of the invasion of Lebanon (Operation "Peace in Galilee"), during which several hundred Palestinians were murdered by the Lebanese Christian militia at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila while the IDF observed, voicing no objection. On 11 February 1983, Sharon was judged culpable by a commission of inquiry headed by Israeli Supreme Court chief justice Yitzhak Kahan for not preventing the slaughter. He was forced to resign his post of defense minister, but remained minister without portfolio.

During the next decade Sharon served in several cabinet posts. Then in 1996 he was appointed national infrastructure minister by Benjamin Netanyahu; two years later he became foreign minister. After the election of Labor's Ehud Barak as prime minister in May 1999, Sharon succeeded Netanyahu as Likud leader. His visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in September 2000 sparked Muslim riots and unleashed the anger of the Palestinians, prompting a revival of the Intifada known as al-Aqsa Intifada.

On 6 February 2001 Sharon was elected prime minister, with 62.5 percent of the votes, against his adversary from the Labor Party, incumbent prime minister Ehud Barak, whose peace policy had failed. A month later Sharon presented his cabinet, composed of 26 ministers belonging to eight different political parties, which allowed him to have a majority of 73 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. In his inauguration speech Ariel Sharon indicated that his cabinet would conduct negotiations with the Palestinians "so as to obtain political agreements, but not under the pressure of terrorism and violence." When the Intifada intensified in the Palestinian territories, he decided to reply to the violence with military operations of unprecedented brutality. This policy of "targeted responses," in other words the assassination of Palestinian leaders and militants, was vigorously criticized not only by Palestinians but also by the Israeli opposition and a part of the international community.

On 4 December 2001, when the terrorist actions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were multiplying, Ariel Sharon decided to increase the operations of the IDF against the symbols of the Palestinian Authority of Yasir Arafat, whom he accused of supporting terrorism. Following a suicide bombing at a Netanya resort hotel in March 2002, Sharon ordered the invasion and reoccupation of West Bank cities under Operation "Defensive Shield." Israeli forces destroyed buildings and captured hundreds of Palestinians. In the 2003 elections, in an apparent endorsement of his policies, voters gave Likud 29.4 percent of the vote (thirty-eight seats in the Knesset), confirming Sharon's premiership.

Sharon continued his aggressive policies, making Palestinian leader Arafat a virtual prisoner in the ruins of his Ramallah headquarters. Under intense pressure from the United States, Sharon's cabinet voted in May 2003 to approve the internationally backed "Road Map" for peace. Sharon surprised many observers by apparently seeking a balance between the right-wing commitment to disputed territories and a more pragmatic approach to an eventual resolution of the conflict. In 2004 he presented a plan to disengage from settlements in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, in the face of strong opposition by a majority of his own Likud Party and the defection or firing of several members of his cabinet.

The Knesset voted to back Sharon's plan in October 2004. Likud called for a referendum, which Sharon rejected, causing a split in the ruling Likud.

SEE ALSO Aqsa Inlifada, al-;Haganah;Intifada (1987–1993);Likud;Road Map (2002);Shlomzion.