Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon

by David Landau

  j When Sharon was asked by police detectives on April 22, 2002, about the sources of the funds that went through Annex, he reportedly replied: “The sources of their money? I never dealt with these financial matters. I think there’s one man who might know, and that’s Omri.” When the detectives pointed out that Omri was maintaining his right to remain silent, Sharon replied, “Look, Omri’s a big boy. He’s got to decide himself” (“The Sharon File,” www.news1.co.il, October 18, 2005).

  k Cyril Kern played his part, too, when he was eventually tracked down by journalists in his high-walled home in Cape Town. The loan was a personal gift to help the family’s struggling ranch, he told a South African newspaper. “I loaned money to a friend and was very happy to do so.” He was not involved in Israeli politics “in any shape or form,” and the loan had been repaid with interest.

  l The unconsummated flirtation with Sharon, coming on top of the electoral disappointment, left Mitzna unpopular with virtually everyone in Labor. Three months later he resigned as leader, replaced—ad interim of course—by the indefatigable Shimon Peres.

  CHAPTER 15 · ABOUT-FACE

  On March 13, 2003, Sharon’s bureau chief, Dov Weissglas, and his national security adviser, Efraim Halevy, found themselves hustled into the Oval Office. They were on a secret one-day mission to Washington to reassure administration officials that Sharon would not muscle in on the impending war with Iraq. But the president wanted to talk to them not about the war but about the push for peace in Palestine that he hoped would follow the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

  Bush confided to the Israelis that the Iraq War was now at hand. He would not wait, he said, for a third UN Security Council resolution. He informed them that he would be making a public statement on the road map. Without mincing words, he demanded that both Sharon and AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, swallow it in silent approbation. The last thing he needed at this delicate juncture was discord with Congress over Israel-Palestine.

  The next day, Secretary Powell by his side, Bush informed reporters in the Rose Garden:

  We have reached a hopeful moment for progress toward the vision of Middle Eastern peace that I outlined last June. I spoke of a day when two states, Israel and Palestine, will live side by side in peace and security … We expect that … a Palestinian Prime Minister will be confirmed soon. Immediately upon confirmation, the road map for peace will be given to the Palestinians and the Israelis. The United States has developed this plan over the last several months in close cooperation with Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations. Once this road map is delivered, we will expect and welcome contributions from Israel and the Palestinians to this document that will advance true peace … America is committed, and I am personally committed, to implementing our road map toward peace.1

  Bush took no questions and strode off. The import was clear: the road map would be issued shortly, and any further haggling over it would take place after it was made public (and hence would not be of much weight).

  The war began the following week. In Israel, which had been a target of Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles during Desert Storm in 1991, there was little public trepidation this time. The government asked people to prepare sealed rooms again, with plastic sheets and masking tape designed to ward off clouds of chemical or biological poison. Very few did. It wasn’t that the public or the military questioned the U.S.-U.K. intelligence assessments that Saddam had, or intended to produce, weapons of mass destruction. They just presumed he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hurl them at Israel. Perhaps this blithe confidence reflected an element of lingering anticlimax after the national trauma thirteen years earlier, when people spent weeks in their sweaty sealed rooms but the Scuds carried conventional explosives and even they were less than devastating. Perhaps, too, it reflected the more recent and much more scarring trauma of the suicide bombings, with the mood of resilience cum resignation that they engendered.

  On April 30, Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and his new cabinet were sworn in in Ramallah, and within hours the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the EU, and the UN) published the road map. In practice, though, as Abu Mazen himself ruefully admitted later, Arafat never relinquished his grip on key security organs, which in part at least accounted for Abu Mazen’s failure to build the “empowered prime ministership” that the Quartet intended.

  The text of the road map was ambitious. It spelled out the three-phase process culminating in “a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005.” Sharon, in other words, long before the end of his current term, would be signing a peace treaty with the new state of Palestine (and hopefully with Syria and Lebanon, too). Granted, plenty of target dates had been set and unmet in Middle East peacemaking before. But this was an American president at the very pinnacle of his international power and influence, as it seemed then, speaking in the name of a quartet of key players on the world stage.

  Phase One of the road map, the phase in which the Palestinians were to end terror and reform their government and Israel was to freeze its settlement building,a also required solemn public declarations of intent from the two sides. The “Israeli leadership” was to issue an “unequivocal statement affirming its commitment to the two-state vision.” For Sharon himself, this at least presented no problem. He had made the rhetorical leap to Palestinian statehood during his first term and had not retreated despite the intense criticism in his own party. For his followers turned critics, however, the road map inevitably triggered a renewed wave of questioning and dissent as their prime minister appeared to accelerate his disturbing metamorphosis. In an interview with Haaretz in mid-April, he seemed actively to court the looming crisis.

  QUESTION: Isn’t the phrase “painful concessions” an empty slogan?

  SHARON: Definitely not. It comes from the depths of my soul. Look, we’re talking about the cradle of the Jewish people. Our entire history is linked to these places: Bethlehem, Shiloh, Beth-El. And I know that some of these places we’re going to have to give up. As a Jew this causes me agony. But my rational determination to reach an understanding overcomes my emotions…

  QUESTION: Have you genuinely accepted the idea of two states for two nations? Do you seriously intend to carry out the [re]partition of western Palestine?

  SHARON: I think this is something that is going to happen. We have to look at it realistically: in the end there will be a Palestinian state. I see things firstly from our own perspective. I don’t think we should be ruling over another people and running its life. I don’t think we have the strength for that. It is too heavy a burden on our people, and it gives rise to serious moral problems and serious economic problems.

  Weissglas later explained Sharon’s acceptance of the road map in the context of his deepening determination to bring an end to the conflict. “Nothing would have made him happier than if the Palestinians had fulfilled their part of the road map. But he never really believed they would do so, even after Arafat’s ostensible devolution of power, indeed even after the rais’s death the following year.”b That deep-seated skepticism, says Weissglas, was the psychological and conceptual basis of Sharon’s subsequent move to unilateralism, from the end of 2003. It was, he says, a radical change of tactic in pursuit of the same strategy: ending the conflict.

  Sharon had changed from obdurate confrontationist to determined peacemaker, Weissglas insists, before he, Weissglas, took over as bureau chief, in the spring of 2002. His own contribution, says Weissglas, was “the realization that the tail was wagging the dog in Israeli policy making.” The tail in this metaphor was the settlers.

  I saw that people’s perceived attitudes to the settlers determined their access to the prime minister. For instance, the new American ambassador, Dan Kurtzer, was held to be hostile to the settlers, so he was kept out in the cold. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief whom I discovered to be a real friend of Israel, was virtually persona non grata in the Prime Minister’s Office specifica
lly because of his opposition to the settlements. Everything was subordinated to the settlements … the army, the budget, everything. What changed in Sharon, in a word, was that the spell of the settlements was broken.

  Sharon’s acceptance of the road map seems to bear this out. He rammed it down his party’s throat not merely as an act of tactical expediency but as an avowed ideological break from the cherished illusion that the occupation could go on forever. “The Palestinian state is hardly my life’s dream,” Sharon declared at cabinet on May 25. “But looking ahead, it is not right for Israel to rule over three and a half million Palestinians. I know every mountain and every hill. I know the ideology. But we have to find a solution for the future generations.”

  The weekend before the cabinet discussion, Sharon, Weissglas, and Omri had spent hours working the phones. There was no point talking to the National Religious Party and National Union–Yisrael Beiteinu ministers; they were certain to vote against it. They remonstrated instead with wavering Likud ministers. In the event, the road map was endorsed in cabinet by a majority of 12 to 7, with 4 abstentions. Among the Likud ministers, 7 voted in favor (the other 5 aye voters were the Shinui ministers); 7 others abstained or voted against. Verter of Haaretz had no doubt he was reporting on a huge upheaval. “The significance of yesterday’s vote was so terrifying for most of the cabinet ministers that they could only attempt to obfuscate it, to roll their eyes, and to explain that anyway nothing would come out of it: the terror would not be eliminated, the incitement would not be stopped, the reforms in the PA would not be passed—and Israel would not be required to carry out its part. ‘In practice,’ [the Likud education minister] Limor Livnat insisted, ‘the cabinet did not accept the map.’ ” Verter, rightly, harbored no such illusions. “Anyone who has been listening to Ariel Sharon’s public pronouncements over these past two years had no need to be surprised.”2

  The split in the party was even more starkly in evidence at the Likud caucus in the Knesset the following day. “Let me tell you in the clearest words I know,” a still-angry Sharon told the faction members, many of whom were openly critical of the cabinet decision. “I am going to make every effort to reach a political settlement of the conflict … I also happen to think that the idea that we can continue to hold three and a half million Palestinians under occupation—you can bridle at the word, but that’s what it is, occupation—that idea is bad for Israel, bad for the Palestinians, bad for our economy. We need to free ourselves from control over three and a half million Palestinians, whose numbers are rising all the time. We have to reach a political settlement.”

  For Israeli right-wingers the word “occupation” itself was anathema. Its use by another Israeli automatically branded him or her as a leftist, a defeatist, a self-hating Jew. The territories had been “liberated” in 1967 and were “administered,” or at most “disputed,” not occupied. A number of Likudniks, aghast and outraged, roped in the like-minded attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, to try to roll back the waves of heresy emanating from their leader. Perhaps, they hoped against hope, it was all a huge slip of the tongue. Rubinstein urged the prime minister to use the neutered euphemism of Israeli officialdom, “disputed territories.”

  Sharon brushed him aside. The next day, briefing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he pointedly rehearsed the statement he had made at the caucus. “I want to restate my position … I will make every effort to reach a political settlement, because that is Israel’s vital interest. And I also think that the idea that we can continue to hold three and a half million Palestinians under occupation—you can bridle at the word, but that’s what it is…,” and so on and so forth, word for word.3

  President Bush invited Sharon and Abu Mazen to a joint summit the following week with him and Jordan’s king, Abdullah, at the Jordanian Red Sea port-resort of Aqaba. Bush himself conferred the day before with other Arab heads of state at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. He hoped to obtain goodwill gestures toward Israel from some of the moderate Arab governments in recognition of the road-map breakthrough. But the Saudis refused, and the Americans had to make do with words of encouragement from the Arab leaders for Abu Mazen, the newly installed Palestinian prime minister who was to deliver the next day at Aqaba the “unequivocal statement reiterating Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and ending all acts of violence … and incitement” required by the road map of the Palestinians as part of their Phase One obligations.

  Abu Mazen, overriding his colleagues and advisers, delivered a conciliatory text that he had worked through with the Americans. “We do not ignore the suffering of the Jews throughout history,” he declared. “It is time to bring all this suffering to an end … We repeat our renunciation of terror against the Israelis wherever they might be. Such methods are inconsistent with our religious and moral traditions … The armed intifada must end … And to establish the Palestinian state, we emphasize our determination to implement our pledges: the rule of law, a single political authority, weapons only in the hands of those who are in charge of upholding the law and order, and political diversity within the framework of democracy.”

  The Palestinians reacted testily to what they felt was Sharon’s inadequate response. “He was supposed to call for a complete end to violence from both sides. He didn’t say that,” one PA official complained. Sharon declared that “there can be no compromise with terror, and Israel, together with all free nations, will continue fighting terrorism until its final defeat … There can be no peace … without the abandonment and elimination of terrorism, violence and incitement.”

  But what he went on to say, speaking in Hebrew, was bold and forceful in the context of his domestic politics. The Palestinians should have recognized that. “We want to make it clear to our Palestinian colleagues that we understand the importance of territorial contiguity in Judea and Samaria for a viable Palestinian state … Israeli policy will reflect that. We accept, too, the principle that no unilateral action by any party should determine the outcome of our negotiations.” In plain language, that meant the old Sharon dream of isolated Palestinian cantons was now publicly and finally buried as far as Sharon was concerned, and the age of Israeli landgrabs for building Jewish settlements in the territories was over. Sharon added: “On the matter of the illegal settlement-outposts, I want to repeat that Israel is a country ruled by law. That being the case, we shall start immediately upon removing the illegal outposts.”

  There was a rebellious mood at the Jerusalem convention center where the Likud central committee convened three days later. Demonstrators milled around outside, howling abuse at Sharon and the ministers who supported him. They were especially hostile toward Omri Sharon, surrounding his car and shouting in unison, “Look where you’ve led your father.” In the hall, hundreds of settler-delegates and their sympathizers set up a raucous cacophony with tin whistles. When Sharon entered, the noise became deafening. When Netanyahu rose to speak, it turned into a friendly chant of “Bibi, Bibi.” Netanyahu said a Palestinian state would be “a faculty for Hamas and al-Qaeda.” He was implacably opposed to it. He was careful, though, not to speak directly against Sharon. Others were less reticent. “How can the prime minister want to give away our ancient patrimony to others?” Uzi Landau, a lifelong hard-liner, hurled at Sharon. “This is a sad day for the Likud and a terrible day for the country. Terror has triumphed.”

  Sharon, in his speech, avoided the buzzword “occupation.” It probably would have triggered a riot; as it was, there was scuffling in the gallery between his supporters and his opponents. Rather, in cautious, measured sentences, he proceeded on what would become, as his second term unfolded, a gradual, steady process of disengagement from the collective discipline of his own party. He recalled Menachem Begin, who spoke in the Knesset of that “extra little bit of responsibility” that rests on a prime minister. “I bear the responsibility,” Sharon declared. “The responsibility lies on my shoulders.” He had promised the party at its last convention a great vi
ctory in the general election, and he had delivered it. But he had also promised the nation “to bring peace and security and I intend to fulfill that, too. For true peace, I said, I am prepared to make painful concessions. Very painful concessions … The people delivered its verdict, and I intend to keep my promise.”

  He did not even look up at the hecklers, let alone respond to them. He did not raise his voice at them, or ask for quiet, or wait for quiet. He ignored them totally and delivered his prepared text as though they were listening in silent and respectful attention. He pitched his speech not at the rowdy audience in the hall but at the nation as a whole, watching him live on prime-time news.

  • • •

  The national leader who transcended and faintly despised mere party politics made a point of despising, too, the insistent attempts to impute “hidden agendas” to his dramatic change of policy. But his narrative, still unfolding, of a leader courageous enough to break with his own past, was already being challenged by an alternative narrative, much less heroic. “The prime minister was no longer a free agent,” the then chairman of the National Security Council and former Mossad director, Efraim Halevy, asserted years later. “He was not in charge. He was acting under duress … Weissglas had a hold over him. I don’t know where it came from. From somewhere outside government.”

  This remarkable indictment could be dismissed as the resentful recrimination of the country’s top intelligence official who was later unceremoniously ousted from the inner sanctum of policy making by Sharon and Weissglas—were it not for the fact that Halevy’s indictment closely tallies with the indictment of another top defense official, the then army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon. “I suspected a sinister, symbiotic relationship between Sharon and Weissglas,” Ya’alon recalled, “based on other, concealed interests.”