The Meaning of Ariel Sharon

The passing of Ariel Sharon, who had been in a coma since 2006, triggered news headlines throughout the world. The 85-year old leader has been described as ‘controversial’, ‘uncompromising’, ‘man-of-peace’ and a ‘butcher’, depending on the media outlet you consume. Moving beyond both narratives of ‘man-of-peace’ and ‘the butcher’, what Ariel Sharon represents is the greatest obstacle to regional peace. Sharon represents the militaristic strand within Israel and there are many leaders in Israel who have taken from his brutish mantle. Sharon’s view can be summed up as this, ‘The Arabs’ understand only one language-force-hit them and hit them hard. It’s not a surprise that when Noam Chomsky was asked for his reaction to his death on Democracy Now he responded “There is a convention which says never speak ill of the dead. It’s rather imposing one, because (in this case) there would be nothing to say.”

Ariel Sharon was born during The British Mandate of Palestine in 1928, and his original name was Ariel Scheinermann, but he (like most of Israel’s early leaders) Hebrewised his name later on. From a young age he was involved in Jewish militias and took up arms as a teenager. After the creation of the State of Israel, Sharon joined the newly formed Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and would later go on to lead Israel’s first paramilitary force Unit 101. However, Unit 101 and Ariel Sharon was responsible for a number of war crimes including the 1953 Qibya massacre, in-which 70 Palestinian civilians were murdered. Sharon was never punished for his role in this massacre and as his career progressed so did the massacres. The closest Sharon came to being held to account was the 1982 Lebanon invasion.      

Lebanon was in the middle of a brutal civil war and Sharon wanted Israel to directly intervene into Lebanon and smash the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and to help his Christian allies create a Christian state in Lebanon. He had a secret alliance with Bashir Al-Gemayel, who was the leader of Maronite Christian faction the Phalange (The Death Squad), the alliance meant that Phalange forces would support Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the Israelis would support the Phalange in taking power. Sharon was Israel’s defence minister and he actively manipulated, withheld information and distorted facts to both the general public and his own cabinet. The war was ultimately a failure and after the 1982, Sabra and Shatilla massacre carried out by the Phalange with the support of Israel, a Knesset inquiry found Sharon personally responsible for the massacre and he was forced to resign. 

Sharon’s made a political come-back in 2000 following the collapse of the peace process and the Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising) began. Sharon never believed in the peace process and he wanted to eliminate Arafat and the Palestinian authority. He lay siege to the West Bank and made Palestinian lives unlivable.

 He was the first Israeli Prime Minster to oversee the creation of the Separation Wall, which divides the West Bank up, and has been ruled to be illegal under international law. The Wall is longer than the Berlin Wall. Some Western leaders’ credit Sharon for the ‘disengagement from Gaza’ in-which he evacuated Jewish settlements from Gaza.

However, removing settlements from Gaza and allowing Palestinian bodies to control the inside of Gaza was not his idea. Since the beginning of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, Israel has tried to handover direct rule of the day to day running of Gaza. There was little economic, political and strategic incentive to keep doing this. Sharon removed settlements and Israel’s direct control inside Gaza, but maintained control of all of Gaza’s borders and set Gaza up for the siege it’s currently under. Sharon may be gone, but many of those who successes him seek to emulate him. Sharon was the living embodiment of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s ‘Iron Wall’, but the trouble with this militant brand of politics is that it has endangered Israel’s existence as a state. Israel has brutalized both the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states for over sixty-years, and in many cases the wars between them were unnecessary and initiated by Israel. Israel has consistently stalled on real peace settlements-as can be seen with the Palestine papers.

Instead of creating a long-standing Jewish state, Sharonism and Jabontinskism, will re-enact the biblical story of Samson and lead the country down the path of self-destruction. And it is this, that will be Sharon’s real legacy.