Biography

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been embroiled in controversy recently in connection with both his past behavior and his current policies.

In October 2003, he was questioned by prosecutors in connection with the “Greek Island Affair.” Businessman David Appel was indicted on charges of bribing Sharon, Sharon’s son Gilad, and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during the late 1990s, in exchange for Sharon’s help in securing real estate development deals. Sharon denied doing anything wrong. In January 2004, Israel's acting Attorney General Edna Arbel said enough evidence had been collected to indict Sharon, and the  decision of whether to indict him could come within weeks. Sharon would become the first Israeli prime minister to be indicted for a crime, and such an event could lead to the fall of the current right-wing government, which is dominated by Sharon’s Likud Party. Sharon vowed on January 22, 2004, to remain as prime minister at least until the next election, scheduled for 2007. As of this writing, an investigation also continues into the question of whether Sharon received an illegal $1.5 million loan during his campaign to win the leadership of the Likud party in 1999. In a public opinion poll conducted last month, Sharon had a 56% disapproval rating among Israelis, compared to 13% in August 2003, but many voters seemed to see no one else as being a viable alternative for prime minister. 

On February 2, 2004, Sharon surprised his supporters by announcing that had told the government to begin plans to evacuate all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Formerly part of the Palestine mandate, Gaza was occupied by Israel from 1967 until 1994, at which time it came under Palestinian self-rule. Some right-wing members of Sharon’s coalition government threatened to quit, while some opposition members said they would have to support such a plan. The chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority said that any effort to trade off Gaza settlements for expansion of West Bank settlements would kill the road map for peace, which aimed to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and establish an independent Palestinian state by 2005. In recent months, Sharon had said that Israel would take unilateral steps to separate Israelis from the West Bank and Gaza if Palestinians did not act to end violence and demonstrate a willingness to negotiate. Under that unilateral plan, a barrier would be erected between Israel and the West Bank.

Throughout Sharon’s career as a military leader and politician, he has taken an ends-justifies-the-means approach to ensuring total security for Israel on his terms, usually by keeping as many land and political rights as possible for the Jewish state and giving as little as possible of these to Palestinians. In his youth, Sharon joined the Jewish underground military organization Haganah and fought in the Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49. In the 1950s he led a number of bloody military operations. Sharon developed a reputation for military prowess and ruthlessness for his role as a commander in the Six-Day War of 1967 (as well as his actions in Israel's 1953 attack on Jordan, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973). His reputation for being hard to control began with the Suez War, when he led a paratroop unit to capture an entrance to the strategic Mitia Pass in the Sinai, suffering significant losses. This reputation would present difficulties later, when he pursued his political ambitions. Sharon resigned from the military in 1972, but when war returned the next year he was recalled, promoted to major general, and put in command of an armored division. He was applauded in 1973 for directing Israeli troops across the Suez Canal to encircle and trap Egyptian forces, turning the course of the Yom Kippur war.

Sharon was named the minister of Defense, Industry and Agriculture in Prime Minister Menahem Begin's government starting in 1977. He encouraged the establishment of a network of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and without explicitly telling Begin, he sent the Israeli army to Beirut, Lebanon on June 6, 1982. The move stopped the Palestine Liberation Organization from using Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, but it also resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Lebanese Christian militiamen in two Beirut refugee camps that were under Israeli control. An Israeli tribunal investigated the invasion. It found Sharon indirectly responsible for the killings, saying that he did nothing to stop the militias from entering the camps, despite fears that militiamen might seek to avenge the killing of their leader on the previous day. Sharon was forced to resign from office, but he remained popular among the Israeli right. He returned to the political stage as housing minister in the early 1990s. Sharon presided over the biggest building drive in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza since Israel occupied the territories in 1967. After Binyamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition came to power in 1996, Netanyahu bowed to pressure to include Sharon in his cabinet, praising his record over the previous 15 years. Sharon went on to win election as prime minister on February 6, 2001. He was re-elected in 2003.