Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon

by David Landau

  Buses with trained guides drove voters up into the mountains, where they could actually look down on their homes and envision for themselves the strategic consequences of giving up the line of western settlements I had built … And they could understand how precarious the Jordan Rift communities were without the line of eastern settlements I had planted on the dominating high ground behind them. By the time the campaign was over more than 300,000 people had made the trip.13

  Sharon’s intervention at Camp David had shown that he was by no means a marginal figure in the Begin government, despite the Shlomzion episode. As time passed, he grew increasingly more central both in the cabinet and in the party. This was due in large measure to the removal from the scene of the two most senior and most charismatic ministers—Dayan, who resigned in October 1979, and Weizman, who followed him in May 1980.

  Both quit in despair over Begin’s disingenuous interpretation of the Camp David “Framework for Peace in the Middle East,” reflected in his approach to the Palestinian autonomy negotiations. He appointed an unwieldy Israeli negotiating team of six ministers (including Sharon), presided over by the minister of interior, Dr. Yosef Burg, the head of the National Religious Party, to negotiate with the Egyptians. Plainly, their mandate was to drag their feet and get nowhere. An urbane and moderate man himself, Burg was weak and wholly in the thrall of the NRP’s settler wing.

  Dayan did not even bother to attend the talks. “After four months,” he wrote to Begin in his letter of resignation, “I feel that the negotiation is for the most part bogus.” Weizman, when he finally stormed out of the cabinet seven months later, tore a peace poster off the wall of the prime minister’s office, shouting, “No one here wants peace.”14

  Begin and his legal advisers had the small print on their side. The five-year transitional period was not to begin until the terms of the autonomy were agreed on to Israel’s satisfaction.

  It is against that backdrop that Carter’s demand for, and Begin’s rejection of, a settlement freeze for the duration of the autonomy talks need to be seen. For Carter, and vicariously for Sadat, the freeze was to be the tangible, cogent sign that Israel intended real autonomy for the Palestinians, winding down the occupation and leading eventually to some form of independence. That, after all, was the plain meaning of the “Framework for Peace,” the spirit of the text before Begin’s lawyers parsed it into meaninglessness. The transitional period was designed to build mutual confidence. Begin, the Americans hoped, would be able to relinquish his ideological inhibitions, or else his successor would.

  “The agreement provides a basis for the resolution of issues involving the West Bank and Gaza over the next five years,” Carter told Congress the day after the Camp David Accords were signed. “After the signing of this framework and during the negotiations concerning Palestinian self-government, no new Israeli settlements will be established in this area.”

  Begin, however, digging in behind his denial of the settlement freeze and his legalistic exegesis, could dismiss that plain reading and keep building his settlements as the tangible, cogent sign that he would never accede to Palestinian independence. Begin’s aides hinted that Sadat was “in on” this twisting of the plain meaning of the agreement. For the Egyptian leader, they nudged and winked, the “Framework for Peace” was merely a fig leaf covering what was in effect a separate Israeli-Egyptian peace. That, indeed, is how much of the Arab world saw Camp David. Egypt found itself largely ostracized and had to give up the leadership of the Arab League, which it had traditionally held. Inside Egypt, too, opposition forces regarded the peace with Israel as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

  Sharon enthusiastically endorsed the most restrictive interpretations of Israel’s commitment to the autonomy. He loudly and repeatedly demanded a thorough debate in cabinet on this issue. Begin resisted, knowing that that would inevitably exacerbate tensions between the senior ministers. But that was precisely Sharon’s intention. He wanted to shore up his Eretz Yisrael credentials with the settler camp and at the same time keep hitting at Weizman, whose job he coveted and whom he saw as the chief obstacle on his path to the conquest of the Likud.

  Weizman made it easy. He was genuinely undergoing a profound change of heart, from aggressive Herut hard-liner to ardent peace advocate and positive-minded negotiator. And he brought the same uninhibited extroversion to his new political persona as he had to his previous one. He criticized Begin openly and called him behind his back “the late,” a cruel reference to the prime minister’s frequent illnesses and bouts of depression.e

  Although Weizman himself staunchly denied it then and thereafter, his dramatic departure was interpreted by some pundits as designed to catalyze the government’s collapse and Begin’s replacement.

  But Begin flatly refused to appoint Sharon as defense minister. He approached Minister of Foreign Affairs Shamir, who declined to swap jobs. He tried Moshe Arens, a U.S.-raised aeronautical engineer who served as chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. But Arens turned him down, too, on the grounds that the new defense minister would have to supervise the evacuation of the Sinai settlements and he was not prepared to do that.15 Begin finally decided to keep the post for himself; he would serve as both prime minister and defense minister, as Ben-Gurion had done.

  Begin was heard muttering to the finance minister, Simcha Ehrlich, that if Sharon were defense minister, he might well send tanks to surround the prime minister’s office. He had to apologize for that, explaining to Sharon that it had been “men’s talk … just a jocular moment.”

  For Sharon, Begin’s hawking the defense post to Shamir and Arens when he was eagerly available for it was a searing insult and, he charged, an act of irresponsibility to the nation. For Begin then to keep it for himself was downright charlatanism. “The Defense Ministry is not some political boon or payoff,” he hurled at Begin across the cabinet table on June 1, 1980. “Prime Minister, you are assuming very grave responsibility indeed if you do not appoint the man most suited for the job.”

  BEGIN (outraged): There are countries where former army commanders are barred by law from becoming minister of defense.

  SHARON: Only a charlatan would fail to create the best resources to fight terrorism. Defense is above such constitutional considerations.

  YADIN: Never!

  (Sharon stomps out of the cabinet room but soon returns.)

  BEGIN: Well, have you leaked everything to the press already?

  SHARON: This is pure vindictiveness! If anyone thinks he can hurt me, he’s wrong!

  BEGIN: Don’t raise your voice.

  SHARON: Don’t provoke me. I’m not like the last defense minister, who just sat quietly when he was attacked. I hit back.16

  It hardly helped that Weizman, before his resignation, took to referring to Sharon as wazir al-bandura—Arabic for minister of tomatoes.17 This was a slighting reference to Sharon’s frequent visits to Egypt to supervise an Israeli show farm at Sadat’s home village and other projects in agriculture and irrigation.f

  In his time as minister of agriculture, Sharon left two momentous marks on the history and geography of his country. One, the Jewish settlements all across the Palestinian areas, was a fateful national blunder that he finally understood and set out to correct toward the end of his life. The other, a network of Jewish villages spread across the hilltops of the Galilee, became a popular success story. It aroused controversy among Israeli-Arabs—its declared purpose was to “Judaize” this part of the country—but enjoyed broad praise in the Israeli Jewish mainstream. By Sharon’s count, twenty-two new kibbutzim and moshavim and another thirty-four mitzpimg were founded during the years 1977–1981.18

  “I didn’t come here to change the demographic balance,” a longtime resident of Mattat, the first mitzpeh, said, looking back. “I’m an individualistic type, and I wanted to live in a place where I don’t have to be in close contact with other people. Our motivation was to live this sort of life; the motivation of the autho
rities was ‘to Judaize the Galilee.’ The two ideas melded together and the State of Israel benefited.”19 In Klil, another early mitzpeh, the nine founding families built their homes in 1979 on two and a half acres each. They were rugged, eco-friendly types, into organic agriculture and sheep rearing. “I remember riding my horse to a meeting at the first house we built,” one member recalled. “Sharon came to visit … We asked him from where to where, in his opinion, we could build our mitzpeh. Arik, being Arik, replied, ‘From the Mediterranean to the Kinneret.’ But we didn’t really need all that.”

  “One can only imagine what would happen if the American government announced that it was worried about the demographic situation in New York because there were too many Jews living there and too few Gentiles,” Arab Knesset member Talab el-Sana observed. “When forty Jewish families want to set up a mitzpeh in the Galilee, they get all the licenses at once, because they’re ‘Judaizing the Galilee.’ The Arabs have to build houses in the fields—and then they get them demolished by the local authorities because they’re ‘illegal.’ ”20

  In part, Israeli Jews were broadly receptive to the strategic thinking behind Sharon’s mitzpeh program because of a traumatic jolt the whole country experienced on March 30, 1976, when protests over Arab land grievances in the Galilee escalated into a bloody standoff with the police and the army. Six Arab citizens were shot dead. It was a moment when the fabric of coexistence between majority and minority threatened to tear apart. There were fears expressed that parts of the Galilee could become permanent no-go areas for Jews. In the Israeli-Arab community, Land Day has been marked ever since with marches, demonstrations against discrimination and land requisitioning, and commemorative events.

  • • •

  Begin’s firm refusal to give Sharon the Defense Ministry was tempered over time by his need for and reliance on Sharon’s support for his decision to bomb Iraq’s nuclear reactor before it became operational. Secret arguments within the cabinet and the defense establishment over whether to bomb or not to bomb began in the months before Weizman’s departure in May 1980 and did not cease until the operation took place, in May 1981.

  Saddam Hussein was working feverishly to complete his reactor, the ministers were told during early 1980. He had an agreement with France to supply weapons-grade uranium and contracts with Portugal and Niger for further quantities of raw uranium.

  Weizman himself, the celebrated air ace, was flatly against an Israeli Air Force operation, chiefly because of its possibly catastrophic effect on the peace process with Egypt. The head of Mossad, the head of Military Intelligence, and the deputy prime minister, Yigael Yadin, were also all against bombing. The naysayers pointed to intelligence assessments that Iraq would not have a bomb available for years. They maintained that close cooperation with Western intelligence agencies would ensure that Saddam Hussein never reached that point, or at least that Israel had full information in real time. But Begin was unconvinced. For him, Saddam’s bombastic threats to destroy the Zionist state raised all the Holocaust associations. Sharon strove mightily to manipulate this ongoing drama to his advantage.

  In October 1980, Begin convened the full cabinet to argue his case. He gravely listed all the reasons not to strike but said they were outweighed by the dangers of doing nothing until it was too late. Iraq’s war with Iran had forced Saddam to suspend work at the reactor for the moment, he disclosed. That meant an Israeli attack would not risk radioactive fallout over a wide area. Begin asked for a decision in principle in favor of bombing and won a majority vote.

  Still the raid was delayed. “Raful, why don’t we carry out the distant, sensitive matter?” Sharon wrote in a note to Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan at a cabinet meeting in March 1981. “Everything’s ready,” Eitan replied. “You’ve got to keep pressing.” Sharon accordingly wrote to Begin: “Prime Minister, why don’t we carry out our decision to hit the ‘distant and sensitive target’? Best, Arik.” “Arik,” Begin wrote back, “I’ll talk to you about it. Best, MB.”21 Three weeks later Sharon wrote again. “Prime Minister, week after week goes by and we’re still delaying … It’s a matter of life and death. I can’t understand these delays.” The next day they spoke by phone. “I can’t sleep at night,” Sharon said. “Believe me,” Begin answered, “your words are not without influence on me.”

  At the beginning of May 1981, Begin asked the cabinet defense committee to formally approve the Israeli raid taking place later that month. The general election was scheduled for June 30, he noted, and if the Likud lost, he did not believe that Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader would be capable of ordering the attack. Meanwhile, a shipment of enriched uranium had reached Iraq, and the reactor was due to start working again in September. The ministers agreed to empower a small committee—Begin, Minister of Foreign Affairs Shamir, and Chief of Staff Eitanh—to determine the precise date. “Prime Minister,” Sharon wrote fulsomely, “this is the historic decision that you faced. I congratulate you on your success in taking it … No more delay. Best, Arik.”

  But there was more delay. On May 10, with the Israeli warplanes poised for takeoff, Begin received a letter from Peres urging him to postpone the operation. The newly elected, not-yet-installed president of France, the Socialist François Mitterrand, should be given the opportunity to stop supporting Iraq, as he had promised, Peres argued. Begin was not persuaded, but realizing that the secret had leaked to the opposition and fearing that the operation could be compromised, he ordered the air force to stand down.22

  The air strike finally went ahead on June 7. It was an unqualified success. The nuclear plant was destroyed. There was no significant radioactive fallout. Just one French technician among the foreign scientists was killed. All the Israeli planes returned safely. There was an international outcry, as expected, but it was mitigated both by a widespread feeling of relief in many countries that Saddam had been defanged and by the unmistakable impression that Washington’s heart was not in its upbraiding and punishment of Israel.

  The verdict of history was similarly sympathetic. The first Gulf War, when a beleaguered Saddam hurled (conventional) missiles nightly at Tel Aviv, and the subsequent unearthing of his chemical and biological stockpiles by UN inspectors made the danger of his nuclear program retrospectively unarguable.

  In Jerusalem, ministers waiting anxiously with Begin at his home broke into shouts of relief when word came through from Chief of Staff Eitan. Begin walked over to Sharon and embraced him.23 Two days later, though, reporting to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Begin pointedly denied press reports that Sharon’s threat to resign had forced his hand.

  He denied, too, with all the oratorical pathos at his command, the whispered suspicions that he had ordered the raid with the polls in mind. “Would I send Jewish boys to risk death, or captivity, which is worse than death, for elections?! Would I send our boys into such danger for elections?!!”

  Begin was at his rhetorical best in this campaign, seizing on an ethnic slur by a pro-Labor popular entertainer to stir up furious resentment among his largely Sephardic constituency. “Is some ham actor hired by Labor to stand on a platform and defile the name of the Sephardic communities?! Sephardim are among the most heroic of the IDF’s fighters. The bravest Israelis. They crossed the canal with Arik Sharon. Under his command they fought on the other side.”

  Though Labor managed to woo back almost all of its supporters (from thirty-two seats in 1977, it pulled back to forty-seven), Likud was up, too, from forty-three to forty-eight, and with the renewed backing of his religious allies Begin had no difficulty forming a new government.

  PEACE AND WAR

  “There are rumors that Arik is pushing me into war,” Begin told the cabinet in May 1981, just before the election, when tensions with Syria were running high. “I have stated that I am not easily pushed.”24

  Not all the ministers were convinced. Simcha Ehrlich and Yigael Yadin, who had warned Begin against giving Sharon national security responsibilities
back in 1977, warned him again in 1981. Moshe Dayan, gravely ill with cancer, went to Begin to voice his trepidation. “I hear Arik’s going to be minister of defense in the new government. I am seriously worried that if he gets the job, he will embroil us in a war in Lebanon. I know him.” Begin tried to allay the sick man’s concerns. The whole cabinet, he pointed out, not the defense minister alone, was constitutionally responsible for the army. Moreover, he himself would make sure to stay in close touch with the chief of staff. “What!” Dayan retorted. “Raful? He’s no better!”25

  The most eerily accurate of the real-time admonishers was the former chief of staff and longtime Sharon foe, Mordechai Gur, now a senior Labor figure, who delivered his message in a newspaper interview. “I’ve sat with Sharon in dozens of meetings about Lebanon, and his mantra has always been ‘We’ve got to march into Lebanon and smash the Syrians!’ When people asked him what we do after smashing the Syrians, he had no answer. This man mustn’t become minister of defense.”26

  Why did Begin, strengthened by his election to a second term, weaken now in the face of Sharon’s pressure and agree to appoint him defense minister, despite all the warnings and reservations? Lebanon was certainly part of the prime minister’s thinking, though it was not yet front and center in the Israeli public’s mind in the summer of 1981. As Begin began his second term that summer, the main challenge on his horizon was carrying out the final, painful phase of the peace treaty with Egypt by the following spring and pulling out of Sinai. Begin needed Sharon, above all, to evict the Sinai settlers.