Ariel Sharon

Sharon was born Ariel Sheinerman to Shmuel and Deborah Sheinerman, Russian immigrants who had established a farmstead at Kfar Malal, a Jewish agricultural community north of Tel Aviv. Sources differ by one day on his birth date: the Jewish Virtual Library gives February 26, 1928, while Encyclopedia.com and CAMERA give February 27.[1][5]

He attended Ge'ula High School in Tel Aviv and later studied history and Middle East studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He studied law from 1958 to 1962 and attended the British Army's Staff College at Camberley in 1957.[1] His agricultural upbringing remained important to him; he later owned a farm in Israel's Negev.[3]

Sharon joined the Haganah at age fourteen in 1942 and served in the Jewish Settlement Police in 1947. During the War of Independence, he was an infantry officer in the Alexandroni Brigade and was badly wounded in the battle of Latrun. After recovering, he served as a battalion intelligence officer and fought around the Faluja pocket in the northern Negev.[1][2]

Unit 101 and the Reprisal Operations

In 1953 Sharon established Unit 101 to conduct retaliatory raids following infiltration attacks across Israel's armistice lines. The unit's doctrine was intended to deter further attacks, but an academic account concludes that it also contained the seeds of escalation. Unit 101 operated for approximately four and a half months before being incorporated into a paratroop battalion under Sharon's command in January 1954.[1][6]

Its most controversial action was the October 1953 raid on Kibya, in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria. The raid followed an infiltration that killed an Israeli woman and her two children. Unit 101 destroyed 42 houses; Jordan reported that 69 civilians, including women and children, were killed, while Sharon said the buildings had appeared to be evacuated.[5]

The 1956 Sinai Campaign

As commander of the 202nd Paratroopers Brigade during the 1956 war, Sharon led forces at the Mitla Pass. Thirty-eight soldiers under his command died, and senior commanders criticized him for entering what they considered an unnecessary battle conducted against orders. His military advancement temporarily stalled afterward.[1]

The Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars

Sharon attained the rank of major general in 1966 at age 38. During the Six-Day War, his Armored Division 38 broke through fortified Egyptian positions at Kusseima–Abu-Ageila. The Ministry of Defense archive states that his offensive strategy earned international commendation from military strategists.[2]

As head of Southern Command from 1969, Sharon led operations against Palestinian infiltrators and terrorist organizations in Gaza. He also oversaw the evacuation of Bedouins from northern Sinai and opposed the Bar-Lev Line; the Ministry of Defense archive notes that the Gaza campaign was severely criticized for human-rights violations.[2]

After retiring from active military service in 1973, Sharon returned as commander of reserve Armored Division 143 during the Yom Kippur War. He led Israeli forces across the Suez Canal, helping encircle Egyptian forces in an operation described by the Ministry of Defense archive as turning the tide of the war.[2][7]

Sharon helped organize the Likud alliance in 1973, was elected to the Knesset that December, and resigned in 1974. From 1975 to 1976 he served as an adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He returned to the Knesset in 1977 on the Shlomzion ticket, joined Herut, and became agriculture minister in Menachem Begin's government.[1][3]

As agriculture minister from 1977 to 1981, Sharon became a leading political patron of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria. In September 1977 he presented a plan for dozens of settlements to a ministerial committee. Recalling his determination to implement it, he wrote: “I’m the only Mapainik in this government. I am not talking here so that I can record my voice in the protocol. Consider it carefully. Because once this is approved, I am going to do it.”[8] He also pursued agricultural cooperation with Egypt.[3]

After the 1981 election, Sharon became defense minister.[1]

As defense minister, Sharon directed the June 1982 invasion of Lebanon, publicly called Operation Peace for the Galilee. Israeli forces advanced beyond the initial forty-kilometer objective and laid siege to Beirut, after which Yasser Arafat and PLO fighters evacuated the city. Israeli forces maintained a presence in southern Lebanon until May 2000.[1][7]

After Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated, Christian Phalangist forces entered the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps and massacred residents. The Israeli government's Kahan Commission found Sharon indirectly responsible for failing to anticipate the danger, facilitating the Phalangists' entry, and failing to take appropriate preventive measures.[1][9] He left the defense portfolio in February 1983 but remained in the cabinet as minister without portfolio.[2][5]

Sharon subsequently served as minister of industry and trade, construction and housing, national infrastructure, and foreign affairs. As construction and housing minister from 1990 to 1992, he initiated an immigrant-absorption program that included 144,000 apartments and helped house nearly one million Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants.[2][3]

He also intensified construction in Judea and Samaria. As foreign minister in 1998, he headed permanent-status negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and met with American, European, Palestinian, and Arab leaders.[1][2]

Sharon became interim Likud leader after Ehud Barak's election as prime minister in May 1999 and was elected party chairman that September. On September 28, 2000, he visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site. The visit lasted 34 minutes, occurred during normal tourist hours, and did not include entry into a mosque. Palestinian leaders attributed the ensuing violence to the visit, but the Mitchell Report concluded that “the Sharon visit did not cause the ‘al-Aqsa intifada.’”[2]

Sharon defeated Barak in a special election on February 6, 2001. In March 2002, after a terrorist attack on a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, he ordered Operation Defensive Shield. Israeli forces reentered major Palestinian Authority areas, took Ramallah, and placed Yasser Arafat's compound under siege.[1]

The Gaza Disengagement

In December 2003 Sharon announced a unilateral plan to remove Israeli troops and settlements from Gaza and four communities in northern Samaria. Reasons cited for his reversal included demographic concerns, international pressure, the burdens of policing Gaza, and his view that Gaza lacked the strategic, religious, and historical importance of Judea and Samaria.[2]

Likud members rejected the proposal in a May 2, 2004 referendum by 60 percent to 40 percent, but Sharon continued to pursue it.[10] The cabinet approved the plan on June 6, and the Knesset endorsed it in October by 67 votes to 45, with seven abstentions and one member absent.[11]

Implementation began with departure notices on August 15, 2005, followed by forced evacuations from August 17. All Gaza settlers had been evacuated by August 22, the four northern Samaria communities by August 23, and the IDF completed its exit on September 12. The operation removed 25 settlements and more than 8,000 residents. Despite large demonstrations and predictions of civil conflict, the evacuation was largely nonviolent.[4][12]

In a September 15 address to the United Nations, Sharon said the last Israeli soldier had left Gaza and military law there had ended. He described the decision as personally difficult but necessary for Israel's future.[13] The withdrawal deepened Likud's internal split, and on November 21 Sharon left the party and established the centrist Kadima, meaning “Forward.”[2]

Sharon suffered a minor stroke on December 18, 2005, and returned to work within days. On January 4, 2006, he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. Under Basic Law Article 16(b), Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert became acting prime minister; he also became acting chairman of Kadima on January 16.[14]

Sharon never regained consciousness. He remained in a coma or vegetative state for approximately eight years and died on January 11, 2014, at age 85. He was survived by his sons Omri and Gilad.[2][3]

Sharon's legacy encompasses both battlefield command and major changes in Israeli policy. His military career included the War of Independence, the Sinai Campaign, the Six-Day War, and the Yom Kippur War; as defense minister, he later oversaw the Lebanon War. His 1967 victory at Abu-Ageila and the 1973 Suez Canal crossing became central to his reputation as a military strategist.[2][7]

In domestic policy, his housing program contributed to the absorption of the large wave of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union. As prime minister, his disengagement dismantled settlements he had once championed, making his shift from settlement patron to architect of withdrawal one of the defining reversals of his career.[2][3]

Sharon also placed his policies within a narrative of Jewish indigeneity and historical continuity. In his 2005 United Nations address, he said that Jewish presence in the Land of Israel had never ceased and described the land's Hebrew names and historical sites as testimony to Jewish identity and rights.[13] World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder summarized the favorable assessment of Sharon by saying that “probably no single individual fought harder to safeguard Israel.”[3]

Sharon's military record generated disputes over both methods and responsibility. At Kibya, Jordan reported 69 civilian deaths after Unit 101 destroyed 42 houses, while Sharon said the buildings had appeared empty. At the Mitla Pass, senior commanders accused him of entering an unnecessary battle against orders, at the cost of 38 Israeli soldiers.[1][5]

The Lebanon War produced the most consequential official judgment against him. The Kahan Commission found him indirectly responsible for failing to anticipate and reduce the danger posed by the Phalangists at Sabra and Shatila. The invasion's expansion toward Beirut and its long aftermath also remained central to criticism of his judgment as defense minister.[1][7]

His 2000 Temple Mount visit became another focus of dispute. Palestinian leaders and some observers treated it as a trigger for the al-Aqsa Intifada, while the Mitchell Report rejected the claim that it caused the uprising. The disagreement concerns both the origins of the violence and whether the visit was a legitimate assertion of Israeli sovereignty or an inflammatory act.[1][2]

Disengagement divided former supporters as sharply as earlier policies had divided his opponents. Religious-nationalist critics who had once called Sharon the “father of the settlements” condemned his withdrawal from Gaza as a betrayal, while critics on the left continued to emphasize settlement expansion and the Lebanon War.[15] His longer-term territorial intentions remain unresolved. Some commentators portrayed him as prepared to withdraw from 90 to 93 percent of the West Bank, while other accounts attributed to him plans to retain the Jordan Valley, eight settlement blocs, and close to half of Judea and Samaria.[16] His incapacitation shortly after founding Kadima prevented those competing interpretations from being tested.