Ariel Sharon: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Ariel Sharon (Hebrew: אריאל שרון), born February 27, 1928, is a long-serving Israeli political and military leader, and has been the current Prime Minister of Israel since March 2001, the eleventh holder of that office. As such, he is also leader of Likud, the largest party in the governing coalition of political parties in the Israeli Knesset (parliament). He was born Ariel Scheinermann, and is also often known by his nickname Arik.

Sharon is a highly controversial figure both inside and outside Israel, attracting diverse and often polar views. Many Israelis, a significant number of Jews worldwide and many foreign observers regard Sharon as a war hero and a strong leader in the fight against terrorism. On the other hand, a number of Israelis and foreign observers believe that his recent efforts have been damaging to the peace process. Sharon's most stringent critics have in the past sought his prosecution as a war criminal, on the grounds of his actions as Israeli Defense Minister during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Early years

Sharon was born Ariel Scheinermann in Kfar Malal in 1928 to a German-Polish father and a Russian mother. In 1942, at the age of 14, he joined the Haganah, the Jewish military precursor to the Israeli Defense Force. At the creation of Israel (and Haganah's transformation into the Israeli Defence Force), Sharon was a platoon commander in the Alexandroni brigade. He was severely wounded in the Second Battle of Latrun, but healed from his injuries. In 1949 he was promoted to a company commander, and in 1951 to an intelligence officer. He then took leave to begin studies of history and Middle Eastern culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A year and a half later, he was asked to return to active service in the rank of major, as the head of the new Unit 101.

Unit 101 undertook a series of daring raids that helped restore the morale of the Israelis and fortify its deterrent image. However, the unit was also criticized for targeting civilians as well as Arab soldiers, resulting in the widely-condemned Qibya massacre in the fall of 1953, in which more than sixty Jordanian civilians were killed in an attack on their village. Investigations later determined that the order to maximize casualties was not given by Sharon himself but by one of his superiors. Shortly afterwards, Unit 101 was merged into the 202nd Paratrooper Brigade (Sharon eventually becoming the latter's commander), which continued to attack military targets, culminating with the attack on Kalkiliya Police in autumn 1956.

In the 1956 Suez War(the british "Operation Musketeer") , Sharon commanded the 202nd Brigade, and was responsible for taking over ground east of the Mitla Pass and eventually overtaking the Pass itself. Having successfully carried out the first part of his mission (joining a battalion paratrooped near Mitla with the rest of the brigade moving on ground), Sharon's unit was deployed near the pass. Neither reconnaissance aircraft nor scouts reported enemy forces inside the Mitla Pass. Sharon, whose forces were initially heading east, away from the pass, reported to his superiors that he was increasingly concerned with the possibility of an enemy thrust through the pass, which could attack his brigade from the flank or the rear.

Sharon asked for permission to attack the pass several times; his requests were denied, but he was allowed to check its status so that if the pass was empty, he could receive permission to take it later. Sharon then sent a small scout force which was met with heavy fire and got stuck due to vehicle malfunction in the middle of the pass. Sharon ordered the rest of his troops to attack, in order to aid their comrades. A bloody battle ensued in which more than forty Israeli soldiers were killed but in the end the pass was taken. Sharon was not only criticized by his superiors, he was damaged by revelations several years later by several ex-subordinates (one of IDF's first major revelations to the press), who claimed that Sharon tried to provoke the Egyptians and sent out the scouts in bad faith, ensuring a battle to ensue. Deliberate or not, the attack was against military wisdom, as the Egyptian forces staying in the pass would have probably withdrawn in a day or two.

The Mitla incident hindered Sharon's military career for several years. In the meanwhile, he occupied the position of an infantry brigade commander and received a law degree from Tel Aviv University. When Yitzhak Rabin (who within a few years became associated with the Labor Party) became Chief of Staff in 1962, however, Sharon began again to rise rapidly in ranks, occupying the positions of Infantry School Commander and Head of Army Training Branch, and from some point, the rank of Major General (Aluf). In the 1967 Six-Day War, Sharon commanded the most powerful armored division on the Sinai front, which made an breakthrough in the Kusseima-Abu-Ageila fortified area. In 1969, he was appointed the Head of IDF's Southern Command. The BBC reported that Sharon was denied the promotion to chief of staff because of his disregard for human life, based the occupation, under his command, of the West Bank and Gaza strip. He had no further promotions before retiring in August 1973. Soon after, he joined the right-wing Likud political party.[1]

Sharon' s military career was not over, however. At the start of the Yom Kippur War on October 6, 1973, he was called back to duty and assigned to command a reserve armored division. His forces did not engage the Egyptian army immediately, and it was Sharon who helped to locate a breach between the Egyptian forces, which he then exploited in capturing a bridge-head on October 16, and throwing a bridge across the Suez Canal the following day. He violated his orders from the head of Southern Command by exploiting this success to cut the supply lines of the Egyptian Third Army, located to the south of the canal crossing, isolating it from other Egyptian units. Tensions between the two generals followed his decision, but a military tribunal later found his action was militarily effective. At this time, his political positions were also controversial and he was relieved of duty in February, 1974.

Sharon was a member of the Knesset 1973-1974, and then from 1977 to the present. In 1975-1976, he served as the security adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He then served as Minister of Agriculture (1977-1981), and as Defense Minister (1981-1983) in Menachem Begin's Likud government.

During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, while Ariel Sharon was Defense Minister, the Sabra and Shatila massacre took place, in which several hundred Palestinians in refugee camps were killed. The massacre was perpetrated by the Phalangists, a Lebanese-Christian militia believed at the time to be allied with Israel, who had been sent into the camps at Sharon's command. The Kahan Commission investigating the events of Sabra and Shatilla, recommended in early 1983 the removal of Sharon from his post as Defense Minister for reasons of negligence, though not complicity, in the massacre. It was later learned that the Phalangist commander, Elie Hobeika, was a double agent working for the Syrians.

In 1987, Time Magazine published a story implying Sharon was directly responsibility for the massacres. Sharon responded by suing Time for libel in American and Israeli courts. Although Sharon was able to prove that Time published a story that it knew was incorrect, the magazine won a legal decision in American suit because Sharon could not establish it had acted out of "malice." Under American law, a public figure is required to prove that libel must be proven both false and malicious, that is specifically intended to cause harm.

Sharon was dismissed by the Prime Minister Begin but he remained in the successive governments as a Minister without portfolio (1983-1984), Minister for Trade and Industry (1984-1990), and Minister for Housing Construction (1990-1992). In Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996-1999 government, he was Minister of National Infrastructure (1996-1998), and Foreign Minister (1998-1999). Upon the election of the Barak Labor government, he became leader of the Likud party. After the collapse of Barak's government, he was elected Prime Minister in February 2001.

In early 2001, relatives of the victims of the Sabra massacre began proceedings in Belgium to have Ariel Sharon indicted on war crimes charges. In June, 2002 Brussels Appeal Court threw out the lawsuit as inadmissible. Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist commander who ordered the massacres, offered to go to Brussels to testafy against Sharon, but by then Hobeika's guilt was well established, and he was soon murdered on a Syrian-controlled highway.

On January 20, 2004, an Israeli court charged property developer David Appel with trying to bribe Sharon while he was serving as Israel's National Infrastructure Minister in the 1990s through his son Gilad. On June 14, 2004, the Attorney General, Meni Mazouz, decided to close the case due to lack of evidence and prosecutorial misconduct.

Shortly thereafter, Sharon proposed Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2004.

According to the Palestinians, Ariel Sharon has followed a military-based policy of non-negotiation under fire.

Palestinians allege that the al-Aqsa Intifada was started because of a visit made by Sharon and an escort of several hundred policemen to the Temple Mount, site of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aksa Mosque. Sharon's visit came after pressure from archeologists who claimed that extensive building operations at the site was destroying priceless antiquities.

Palestinian lobbyists and commentators have accused Sharon of purposely staging this event, to prevent the further continuation of peace talks.

Israel denies this claim vehemently, instead claiming that the uprising had been engineered by Yasser Arafat himself, as a leverage tool.

Palestinians doubt the existence of popular support to Sharon's actions. Polls published in the media, as well as the 140% call-up of reservists (as opposed to the 60% in regular periods) seem to indicate that the Israeli is quite supportive of the Israeli policies, as a whole. A survey conducted by Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center on May 2004 found that 80% of all Israelis hold that the Israel Defense Forces have succeeded in dealing with the Al-Aqsa Intifada militarily, [2] indicating that they think that Sharon's hard-line policy is vital to fight against Palestinian terrorism.

Israelis feel that Ariel Sharon is unfairly criticised by Arabs and by the media. The Arab media has accused Sharon of being a settler himself, whereas Sharon has never lived in a settlement (he is the owner of a house in East Jerusalem).

On 20 July 2004, Sharon called on French Jews to emigrate to Israel immediately, in light of an apparent dramatic rise in French anti-semitism (94 anti-semitic assaults in the first six months of 2004, as compared to 47 for all of 2003). France has the third largest Jewish population in the world (about 600,000 people) after Israel and the United States. Sharon claimed that an "unfettered antisemitism" reigned in France. The French government responded by describing his comments as "unacceptable", so did the French representative Jewish organization CRIF, which denied Sharon's claim of intense antisemitism in French society. An Israeli spokesperson later claimed that Sharon had been misunderstood. France has indefinitely postponed a visit by Sharon.

"If we [are to] reach a situation of true peace, real peace, peace for generations, we will have to make painful concessions. Not in exchange for promises, but rather in exchange for peace." — Ariel Sharon, as Prime Minister, April 2003. [3] [4]

"Everyone there should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that's grabbed, will be in our hands. Everything we don't grab will be in their hands." — Ariel Sharon, as Israeli Foreign Minister, in comments broadcast on Israeli radio, November 15, 1998. [5]

"I am for lasting peace... United, I believe, we [Jews and Arabs together] can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace, one with full recognition of the rights of the Jews in their one and only land: peace with security for generations and peace with a united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever." [6] [7]