Warrior- statesman leaves a divisive legacy
Jerusalem – Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s body lay in state today outside parliament in Jerusalem, where thousands of Israelis waited to bid farewell to the maverick warrior- statesman who reshaped the Middle East.
Sharon, 85, died yesterday after eight years in a coma, caused by a stroke he suffered at the pinnacle of his political power. He will be buried tomorrow in a military funeral on his farm in southern Israel.
Sharon was one of Israel’s finest military strategists and most powerful political figures, spearheading military invasion and Jewish settlement building on land the Palestinians want for a state, and making the shock decision to withdraw from one of those territories, the Gaza Strip. He was prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
Sharon’s stroke happened shortly after he quit the Right- wing Likud party and founded a centrist faction to advance peace with the Palestinians, whose 2000- 05 ‘‘ Intifada’’ uprising he had battled as prime minister.
In parliament’s main plaza, Israelis filed past Sharon’s coffin, which was draped in the national flag.
‘‘ Whatever he decided to do, he followed it through to the end – and that was his greatness,’’ said Shlomo Tal, 74, from Jerusalem, who came to pay his respects.
Sharon was widely hated by Arabs over the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila camp in Beirut by Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel.
But the United States and other foreign powers mourned him as a peacemaker, noting his pursuit of dialogue with the Palestinians.
‘‘ He was bound to the land. He knew that the land must be protected. And he understood above all else that our existence is predicated on our ability to protect ourselves by ourselves,’’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet today after ministers stood for a minute’s silence as a mark of honour.
Peace negotiations continue under Israeli Netanyahu, though the differences remain wide. The US relationship with Netanyahu has been strained by issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme and settlement building.
Many Israelis will remember Sharon as a brilliant but unpredictable military leader who fought in the 1948 war of Israel’s foundation and went on to earn a reputation for trigger- happy disobedience. He was hailed for the crucial counter- attack across the Suez Canal that helped to turn the tide of the 1973 Middle East war with Egypt and Syria.
In 1983, an Israeli state inquiry found that Sharon – who as defence minister engineered Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and war against Palestinian guerrillas there – indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila killings, forced to resign.
‘‘ The Palestinian people remember what Sharon did and tried to do to our people and their dream of forming a state,’’ said Wael Abu Yousef, a senior member of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Palestinians in Gaza handed out sweets to passersby and motorists to celebrate of Sharon’s passing.
‘‘ We have become more confident in victory with the departure of this tyrant,’’ said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist faction governing Gaza.
A memorial service will be held at parliament tomorrow before the funeral, at which Israeli generals will serve as pallbearers.
Among the foreign dignitaries expected to attend the ceremonies are US Vice President Joe Biden, Israeli- Palestinian peace mediator and former British prime minister
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Palestinians accuse Sharon of sparking their ‘‘ Intifada’’ with a provocative visit to the al Aqsa mosque plaza in Jerusalem’s Old City in 2000, a year before he took power.
He further angered them with a crushing army invasion of Palestinian- ruled areas of the West Bank in 2002 after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, and with his siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah compound.
But Sharon surprised many by withdrawing soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, under a policy of ‘‘ disengagement’’ from conflict and a pursuit of dialogue with the Palestinians.
The pullout, however, led to Gaza’s takeover by Hamas – which, unlike the West Bank- based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, spurns co- existence with often trades fire with it.
Sharon was resented by many settlers who once saw him as their champion. Israeli media quoted lawmaker Orit Strouk of the Jewish Home, an ultranationalist party in Netanyahu’s coalition, as thanking God that Sharon was removed from power before he could order West Bank withdrawals. The remarks sparked outrage, and she later apologised.
As Sharon’s finance minister in 2005, Netanyahu quit in protest at the Gaza plan. Netanyahu points to Hamas’s rise as vindication of his stance.
A lifelong farmer renowned for his big appetite, Sharon was known as ‘‘ the Bulldozer’’, in part for his headlong pursuit of hardline policies, which included settlement expansion in territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
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